I 



I 



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1 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. Copyright No. 

Shelt.ll__:__ 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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BOOKS 



GEORGE D. WATSON. 



White Robes, . 50 cts. 

Presenting very clear definitions of the difference between 
pardon and purity, cleansing and growth, partial and perfect 
love. ; 

Holiness Manual, 25 cts. 

Containing twenty-five Bible-readings, with proof texts 
carefully setting forth the various stages of grace. Specially 
helpful for young converts. 

Coals of Fire, 50 cts. 

Containing luminous expositions from the Old Testament 
on the deep things of ChristiaiV experience, including an an- 
alysis of the experiences of Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, etc. A re- 
ligious classic for advanced believers. 

Love Abounding, $1.00 

Containing Sermons and Bible expositions stenographically 
reported as delivered. 

Secret of Spiritual Power, ... 50 cts. 

This book deals particularly with the operation of the Holy 
Spirit on the mental and moral faculties of the soul. 

Soul Food, 50 cts. 

Treating of spiritual nourishment and the life of pure faith 
as developed in language and affection and suffering and 
prayer and special providence. A book that touches the 
heart of the Christian in its inner depths. 

Pure Gold, 50 cts. 

This book treats of the rich golden traits that constitute a 
real Bible character. It is heart searching and soul-stirring. 

Fruits of Canaan, 10 cts. 

Contains chapters on personal experience and how to grow 
in grace. 

Beauty for Ashes, 10 cts. 

Treating of how persons lose their Christian experience and 
how the ashes of a backslidden heart can be restored to beauty 
by the Holy Ghost. 

Types of the Holy Spirit, 10 cts. 

A carefully written book on the different Scripture em- 
blems of the Holy Spirit and how we may have His indwelling 
and communion. 

Steps to the Throne, 60 cts. 



If the reading of this book has been blest to you, you 
will find great spiritual uplift in reading the other books by 
the same author. 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



BY 

GEORGE D. WATSON, 

Evangelist, and Author of various Books. 



Price, 60 cents. Liberal discount in quantities. 



LOUISVILLE, KY. 

PICKETT PUBLISHING CO. 

1898. 



BT?$s 
W35 



16340 - 

Copyright, 1898, by 
Pickett Pubt^ishijsg Co. 




TWO COPIES RECEIVED* 

2 ntf Copy 
1898. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



CHAPTER I. 

The Emblems in Revelation 7 

CHAPTER IT. 

The Seven Churches 16 

CHAPTER III. 
Hear What the Spirit Saith 24 

CHAPTER IV. 

Eat of the Tree of Life 32 

CHAPTER V. 

Not Hurt of the Second Death . «... 38 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Hidden Manna 43 

CHAPTER VII. 

The White Stone 3 50 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Till I Come. 55 

CHAPTER IX. 
Power Over the Nations 65 

CHAPTER X. 

The Morning Star 76 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



CHAPTER XI. 
White Raiment . , 86 

CHAPTER XII. 
A Pillar in the Temple of God 93 

CHAPTER XIII. 
I Will Sup With Him 103 

CHAPTER XIV. 
He Will Sup With Me 108 

CHAPTER XV. 
In My Throne 120 

CHAPTER XVI. 
The Rainbow Around the Throne 130 

CHAPTER XVII. 
The Living Creatures in the Throne 141 

Conclusion 155 

SUPPLEMENT CHAPTER. 
Christ's Return to Jerusalem. 158 



PREFACE. 



For twenty-five or thirty years of my life I ac- 
cepted the old Roman Catholic notion, which is ac- 
cepted by most Protestants, that the second com- 
ing of Jesus would be after the millenium, and at 
the time of the general judgment. Then, for a few 
years, I was unsettled in my views on that subject, 
for I saw so many portions of Scripture that could 
not have any reasonable interpretation in harmony 
with that old theory. 

Early in 1896 I began to pray very earnestly 
for the Holy Spirit to open up the scriptures to me 
clearly on that subject. In two or three weeks 
afterward the Spirit began unfolding to my mind, 
in a remarkable way, the Book of Revelation, and 
the parables of Jesus, and other scriptures on the 
pre-millennial coming of Christ, and the light on 
that subject has been increasing ever since. Some 
years ago I published a small book, called "The 
Seven Overcomeths," giving only the interpreta- 
tion that applied to the interior spiritual life, but 
did not then see their ulterior and perfect relation 
to the coming of Jesus, and His millennial reign. 
I have given in this book what the Spirit has 
given to me of the application of the seven over- 
comeths, not only to the inner life in the present 
state, but their application as preparing the be- 



6 



PREFACE. 



liever to reign with Jesus in His coming king- 
dom. 

If my life is spared, I have several other books 
to write upon this subject. I trust the blessed 
Comforter will apply the things in the following 
pages to the hearts of many thousands, and stir 
God's children to prepare themselves to meet the 
coming King. 

G. D. W. 

Denver, Col., April 30, 1898. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE EMBLEMS IN REVELATION. 

IT often happens that when the head of a great 
government wishes to communicate very secret 
and important matter to one of its ministers in a 
foreign land it adopts a cipher code, that is a lan- 
guage in signs, so as to transmit the message with- 
out any one being able to understand it, except the 
person to whom it is sent. This is precisely what 
Jesus did in the Book of Revelation. We are told 
that God gave this revelation to his Son Jesus, and 
Jesus gave it in signs, or telegraphic ciphers, to an 
angel, and the angel gave these signs unto John. 
Hence this last and crowning book of God's word, 
is written out largely in ciphers. This was done 
in order that the message might be safely trans- 
mitted through the dark ages. If the Romanists 
had perfectly understood in centuries gone by, all 
the teachings of this book, they would have de- 
stroyed it from the earth; and so God adopted a 
method of sign language, in order that no one 
might understand it except those for whom it was 
especially designed. As the coming of Christ gets 
nearer, the Holy Spirit is more and more reveal- 
ing the secrets of this wonderful book to His hum- 
ble and thoughtful servants in all the earth; and 
many things which have been concealed through 



6 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



the Dark Ages are now beginning to be unfolded 
in the clear light, which the Holy Spirit is pouring 
upon those who are entirely devoted to God. Let 
us remember, that the Holy Spirit selects His 
emblems with a perfect scientific accuracy, and all 
the metaphors and symbols used in Scripture are 
chosen with infallible wisdom. If we take the 
pains to read the Book of Revelation, and cull out 
all the various emblems which are used therein, 
we will find that all of them are explained in the 
book itself. And if we can discover the meaning 
of these various types we have the secret key to 
unlock nearly everything in the book. It is my 
purpose in this volume to give an exegesis of the 
second, third and fourth chapters, showing more 
particularly the connection between Christian holi- 
ness and the coming reign of Jesus on this earth; 
but I have thought it well to give in this chapter 
a brief explanation of the various emblems in the 
book, that the common reader may be able to pur- 
sue an individual study of all the book. 

4 'Stars 55 in this book represent Ministers, more 
particularly the office of the Minister, not only a 
church Minister, but also a State Minister. Hence 
it denotes Princes, or under rulers in Church or 
State. 

"Candlesticks" represent separate congrega- 
tions of Christians, not a denomination, or a great 
body, but simply congregations, or a church in its 
local and social organic form. 

"Heaven" in this book, in the majority of in- 
stances, means God's Kingdom among men. This 



THE EMBLEMS IN REVELATION. 



9 



will be kept strictly in view, for all sorts of er- 
roneous and fantastic interpretations of this book 
have resulted from the notion that the word 
' 'Heaven'' means the third Heavens where God the 
Father has His throne of glory. The w T ord 
"Heaven" as used in the parables of Jesus, refers 
continually to God's Kingdom among men, and, in 
nearly every instance, this word Heaven is in the 
Greek in the plural number, proving that it is a term 
of large and manifold meaning., Jesus says: "The 
Kingdom of the Heavens is like a net cast into the 
sea, in which were gathered both good fish and bad 
fish," which simply means the Kingdom of God on 
this earth. In like manner the word Heaven, in 
most places in Revelation, means the Kingdom of 
God among men,, and when we read, "I saw a 
great sign in Heaven,"" that is in the Kingdom of 
God on earth. And again, "there was war in 
Heaven," which refers emphatically to the great 
Reformation of Martin Luther, and the conflict 
between the Protestants and the Catholics. The old 
notion that there was war in the third Heavens, 
where the Father has His throne, is a teaching of 
Catholicism and the dream of poets, but utterly un- 
scriptural. No war has ever agitated those bright 
regions of eternal glory. 

"Woman" in this book, is always a type of an 
organized body of professed Christians. Through- 
out the entire Bible, woman is a type of the church, 
and, when used in the plural number, represents 
the various branches and organized bodies of pro- 
fessed worshipers of God. If this type were 



10 



STEPS TO THE THRONE, 



always remembered it would save the reader from 
a great many foolish interpretations of this book. 
For instance, those who are spoken of in Chapter 
14 as the Bride of the Lamb,, are said to be "pure 
virgins, " "who were not defiled with other women." 
The word "women" means the various branches, 
and bodies of ecclesiastical systems, w T hich become 
worldly, and fashionable, and filled up with various 
carnal practices. But those believers who are 
sanctified, and w T edded to Christ, are delivered from 
all ecclesiastical corruption. And the picture is 
that of one pure woman, keeping herself from the 
various carnal practices of other women, that is of 
other organized church bodies. 

"Sun" in this book, typifies a King, or a King- 
dom, that is royal splendor, imperial power. And 
in many other portions of Scripture, the word 
"sun" represents kingly authority. When Joseph 
in his dream saw the sun, moon, and stars bow to 
him, the sun was a type of Jacob, who was really 
a King, the moon a type of his mother, who was a 
Queen, and the stars, a type of his brethren, who 
were Princes and Ministers of State. Hence, 
throughout this book, the "sun" means kingly 
authority, as when John saw the "woman," that is 
the Christian Church, "clothed with the sun," that 
is imperial splendor. Again, the angel standing in 
the sun, to proclaim war, represents the angel of 
God, stirring up all the royal heads among the 
nations to declare war. 

"Moon" typifies a Queen, or a minor King, or 
Principality, a sub-King. As when "the woman 



THE EMBLEMS IN REVELATION. 11 



clothed with the sun," had the moon under her 
foot, that is the great Catholic church, clothed in 
royalty, had all the other Kings and Queens and 
Princes of the Christian world, under her foot, 
which was literally the case for 1000 years. 

'•Four beasts" in Revelation, should always be 
read "four living creatures." The word "four 
beasts" is a horrible translation of the original, 
which is the very word used for eternal life. So 
always read the "four living creatures," which are 
the same creatures described by Ezekiel, and 
Isaiah, as the seraphim and cherubim. They al- 
ways represent glorified saints, especially those 
who take high rank in the Kingdom of grace and 
glory. Hence these "four living creatures," are 
represented as being in the throne with Jesus, dur- 
ing His millennial reign. They certainly are saved 
and glorified men, for in one place we are told, that 
they praise God for having been saved and washed 
in Christ's blood from among the nations. 
"Beasts," when not connected with the word 
"four," always represents human governments, 
and especially professedly Christian governments, 
which are yet full of tyranny, and oppression, po- 
litical scheming, and selfishness, and greed. The 
Greek word for k 'beast" in all such places, is a 
very different word from the four living creatures, 
and signifies a wild, bloodthirsty beast of the 
forest, a true type of the ambition, and greed, and 
tyranny of politicians. 

"Smoke" in this book, represents whatever 
comes out of the mouth, in the form of either 



12 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



prayer, or blasphemy. Prayer is represented by 
incense,, a sweet, fragrant smoke, typifying the 
fragrance of the prayers of God's servants. But 
blasphemy and cursing from the mouths of those 
who are lost, are represented by the smoke of 
burning sulphur. 

''Fowls" in this book, is always an emblem of 
demons, and evil spirits. In fact this is the type 
of the fowls of the air. all through the Bible. 
Jesus says, "the fowls of the air picked up the 
grain that had been sown by the wayside,'' and 
afterwards tells us these fowls are devils. In His 
parable on the Christian church, he represents it 
as a mustard plant, growing so large that the fowls 
of the air lodged in its branches, which has been 
sadly fulfilled, in the fact that myriads of demons 
lodge in the various branches of the nominal 
church. Hence the "fowls'' that fatten on the 
horses, and on captains, and on warriors, repre- 
sent the demons feasting themselves on a battle- 
field, for they delight in the slaughter of human 
beings. 

"Waters'' represent the souls of mankind. Hence 
the woman sitting on many waters, represents the 
organized church of Rome, presiding over the 
souls of many nations. Mudd}^ water represents 
wicked souls, casting up mire and dirt. Clear, 
glassy water, represents pure souls, cleansed from 
all sinful tempers and desires, and filled with a 
beautiful transparency, without guile, without evil 
tempers, like unto clear glass. This is the picture 
of what the souls of men will be in the millennial 



THE EMBLEMS IN REVELATION. 



13 



age, when they will be presided over by the glori- 
fied saints of the Bridehood, who are represented 
as standing upon the glassy sea. 

"Man-child" in this book, is a type of the mar- 
tyrs, who were slain by the Romish church during 
the Dark Ages. It is a great mistake to call the 
4 'man-child" in chapter 12 Jesus, for the prophecy 
in that chapter refers emphatically to something 
that had not occurred at the time John was alive. 
The ' 'man-child" represents those Protestants 
who were converted and sanctified inside the bosom 
of the Romish church, and which caused her trouble 
and sorrow. 

"Red dragon" is a type of the Romish Inquisi- 
tion. It was the incarnation of the devil, in an or- 
ganized institution for bloody murder, to capture 
and kill the Protestants, as soon as they dared con- 
fess their saving faith. Hence the "Red dragon 
stood in front of the woman," that is in front of 
the church, to devour her children, that is to slay 
the Protestants, as quick as they were born, that 
is, as soon as they confessed their faith. 

"Horses" in this book represent organized ag- 
gression. In all ages the horse is a type of or- 
ganized and swift power. The horse is the swift- 
est of all animals, and the one mostly used in times 
of war. The word "horse" is used among all na- 
tions in Proverbs, as "war-horse," and "swift as 
a race-horse/' and such expressions. 

The "white horse" represents organized and 
aggressive holiness, pushing its way from pente- 
cost out among the nations. 



14 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



The "reel horse'" represents organized opposi- 
tion to Jesus, and bloody wars against the truth. 

The "black horse"' represents organized ig- 
norance, darkness, superstition, such as was the 
case in the Dark Ages. 

The "pale horse"' represents organized forms of 
ecclesiastical back- sliding, where bodies of believ- 
ers, professing to be alive, have a pale and ghastly 
type of life, such as is the case at the present day. 

"Winds" represent heresies, terrible delusions, 
terrific scourgings from God, the great tribula- 
tions, w T hich are to be let loose on the earth, just 
as soon as God gets all His elect Bride w T holly 
sanctified, and sealed with the baptism of the Holy 
Ghost and fire. 

"Vials'" represent the outpouring of God's 
w r rath and judgment upon different nations, and 
at different periods, such as the French Revolu- 
tion, and the late Civil War in America, and sim- 
ilar events. 

"Frogs" represent evil spirits, going forth to 
seduce the people into false systems of faith. 
These frogs take on the form of spiritualism, 
Swedenborgianism, Christian science, theosophy, 
Mormonism, and baal-worship in the various 
lodges of secret societies. 

A ' 'pure river" represents the Holy Spirit, 
which flows out - eternally from the Father and 
from the Son. 

The "Tree of Life" represents Jesus, as the in- 
carnate Redeemer and Savior. 

The number 144,000 represents that elect com- 



THE EMBLEMS IN REVELATION. 



15 



pany through all the ages, who have measured up 
to a life of perfect faith and obedience, and who 
have been qualified to form the Bride of the Lamb. 
This number is used because it is a multiple of 12, 
for the number 12 in Scripture always represents 
the Kingdom of God. 

Three represents the Trinity, Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost. 

Four represents humanity, especially redeemed 
and glorified humanity. 

Six represents imperfection, the number by 
which Satan counterfeits the work of God. 

Seven represents salvation, or the Christ life in 
His saints, for as 3 and 4 make 7, so God and man, 
united, constitute salvation. 

Ten represents the number for multitude, as thou- 
sands, or tens of thousands, etc. 

Twelve represents the Divine government, for as 
3 times 4 make 12, so God multiplies himself in His 
creatures, which constitutes His government. 

Forty represents proving, testing, trying. 

Fifty is the complete cycle number, the jubilee 
number, hence a type of the Millennial Kingdom, 
when creation will be restored to its normal con- 
dition. 

There are a few other emblems, Avhich are used, 
which I may refer to in succeeding chapters. But 
if these types are kept in mind, the ordinary reader 
will be able to have a common sense and satisfac- 
tory understanding of the knowledge of the things 
that God has been pleased to make known to us in 
this wonderful and last book of His infallible word. 



16 



STEPS TO THE THRONE, 



CHAPTER II. 

"THE SEVEN CHURCHES." 
Rev. i : 1 1 . 

IN order to arrive at any correct understanding of 
these three chapters, which we have laid before 
us for our study in this book, we must endeavor to 
find out the significance of these seven churches, 
which Christ selected, to whom the message of the 
apocalyptic visions were especially sent. The Bible 
is God's sample book. The Holy Spirit could 
doubtless have given us thousands of Bibles simi- 
lar to the one we have, and all of them been filled 
with remarkable characters and incidents, but He 
has selected samples of men, and events, and 
truths, which His wisdom saw were best adapted 
for our instruction and salvation. From the hun- 
dreds of churches which existed in the days of St. 
John. Jesus selected these seven churches of Asia, 
with a view of setting forth the various stages of 
the Christian churches, from the days of John 
until the coming of Jesus, and the close of the 
Gentile Age. We see in these seven churches, 
samples of all the Christian churches of all the 
Ages. There is not a congregation of professed 
Christians in the world, which perhaps is not in the 
condition of one of these seven churches. So that 
in whatever stage a church may be, either in its 
holiness or corruption, it will find itself actually 
mirrored in the looking-glass of the second and 



THE SEVEN CHURCHES. 



17 



third chapters of Revelation. This same truth ap- 
plies with equal force to all individual members of 
the church. Every separate member of the Chris- 
tian church will find himself represented in one of 
these various congregations. It is a melancholy re- 
flection, that out of these seven churches there are 
only two which escape condemnation, or a reproof 
from the Lord. From this w 7 e learn that a small 
minority, either of separate congregations, or of 
individual members, are living in such union with 
Jesus as to have His perfect approbation. But the 
main lesson to be drawn from these seven churches 
is, that here w T e see set forth the various stages of 
the Christian church, from the days of the apostles 
until Christ's second coming. 

"The Church of Ephesus" represents the Chris- 
tians in the first century. They are described as 
''having abundant works, and patience, and ortho- 
doxy, and they tried those who professed to be 
apostles, and were not, and they had many extra- 
ordinary virtues, yet Jesus said they had left their 
first love." This word, "first love," must not be 
understood to mean the love of a young convert, 
but it was first love in the point of rank and 
quality. God wants our love, pure and tender, and 
warm, and personal, over and above all other 
things, or labors, or sacrifices and nothing grieves 
the Infinite heart more quickly than to see our per- 
sonal affection for Him is cooling down. This was 
the condition of the Christian church, even before 
the death, or the translation of, St. John, as many 
suppose he was translated to Heaven, 

2 



18 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



"The Church of Smyrna'" represents the con- 
dition of Christian believers in the second and 
third centuries, during the great persecutions from 
the heathen. Jesus told this church that the devil 
would cast them into prison, that they should be 
tried, and have tribulation ten days, and for them 
not to be afraid of the things they should suffer, 
and though they had outward poverty, yet in grace 
they were rich, and that if they were faithful unto 
death, he would give them a crown of life. During 
the second and third centuries the Roman Emperor 
issued edicts of persecution against the Christians, 
and there were ten of these great imperial perse- 
cutions, which was the fulfillment of the "ten days 
tribulation" prophesied of them. In those perse- 
cutions, Christians were frequently covered with 
tar, and oil, and set on fire at night, to make bon- 
fires for the thousands of heathen Romans to look 
upon with fiendish delight. At other times they 
were thrown into an arena of wild beasts, and torn 
to pieces, while the great amphitheater was filled 
with people, who shouted and laughed, to see the 
wild beasts devouring Christians. These persecu- 
tions kept the church pure, hence we find there is 
not a word of reproof for the church of Smyrna, 
but everything of encouragement and approbation. 

"The Church of Pergamos" represents what the 
Christian church was in the fourth and fifth centu- 
ries. In this church we find a mixedness, some 
were very spiritual, being faithful even to martyr- 
dom, but others were stumbling blocks, and hold- 
ing on to false and ruinous doctrines, especially the 



THE SEVEN CHURCHESc 



19 



doctrine of the Nicolaitanes, 6 4 which held that the 
body could commit sin, and be full of iniquity, while 
the soul could remain pure/' This was the Age 
in which the Emperor Constantine professed the 
Christian faith, and reversed all the edicts of per- 
secution, and began to shower favors upon the. 
church, and load the Bishops and Christian Minis- 
ters, with many emoluments and gifts. This "was 
the beginning of the downfall of spiritual Christi- 
anity, and the beginning of the formation of all the 
Christian societies into one great ecclesiastical sys- 
tem, which became the Roman Catholic Church. 
Up to this time, the churches were not formed into 
one organic body of church government, and from 
this time the love of many waxed cold, and many 
erroneous doctrines began to creep into the Chris- 
tian ministry, and there began that horrible amal- 
gamation of heathen philosophy with Christian 
doctrine. Hence the Romish Church is a con- 
glomerate mass, in w 7 hich Judaism, and heathen- 
ism, and Christianity, are all merged into one 
system. 

"The Church of Thyatira" represents what the 
church was from the sixth to the tw 7 elfth centuries. 
Thyatira was a wealthy, fashionable city, and silk 
emporium, and therefore is used to symbolize the 
worldly and fashionable splendor of backslidden 
Christianity. There was in the.church at Thyatira, 
a woman preacher named Jezebel, who taught and 
practiced the doctrine of free love. Jesus selected 
this woman, and her teaching and practice, to rep- 
resent what the Romish Church was during the 



20 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



Dark Ages. It was during these centuries, that 
the Christian Church became united with the State 
government, which has always been an abomina- 
tion to the Lord, and is denounced as spiritual 
fornication. When the Roman Empire was de- 
stroyed by the invasion of the Goths and Vandals 
from the north of Europe, the Caesars were de- 
throned. Then the Bishops and Rulers of the 
Christian Church, obtained the ascendency in the 
politics of Europe, and the church became the 
dominant power over all State rulers. It was then 
that Popery was instituted, and it was recognized 
as the ruler of the world. John saw in his vision, 
"a woman sitting upon a beast." The ''woman" 
represents the Roman Catholic Church, and the 
''beast" represents the Roman Empire, hence the 
church governed the politics and Kingdoms of 
what was former^ the Roman Empire. This was 
the period which Ave dominate the Dark Ages. 

'•The Church of Sardis" typifies the period from 
the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, just before 
the Great Reformation in Germany and England. 
Of this church Christ says, thou hast a name that 
thou livest, and art dead. He also says, thou hast 
a few names even in Sardis, which have not defiled 
their garments. These few undefiled ones repre- 
sent those holy persons that arose in the church 
during that period, as burning and shining lights 
of perfect love, such as Thomas a Kempis, and John 
Thaller, and John of the Cross, and many saintly 
persons, whose writings on spirituality became the 
seed of the Reformation. It was during these cen- 



THE SEVEN CHURCHES. 



21 



turies that there came what is called the Revival of 
Letters. Printing was invented, and many began 
to study the laws of nature, and poetry, and works 
on philosophy and science began to be published. 

"The Church of Philadelphia" covers the period 
of the Reformation. This revolt from the darkness 
and superstition of Romanism began simultaneously 
in Prance, and Germany, and England, and cov- 
ered a period of about 200 years, from the fifteenth 
to the seventeenth centuries. This Reformation 
embraces the great work of Martin Luther, and his 
coadjutors in Germany, and the Revival in France 
under the Huguenots, and in England under Ridley 
and Wycliff, and a little later under George Fox, 
the founder of the Quaker society, and broke out 
afresh a century later, under the Great Wesleyan 
Revival, All the modern churches of Protestant- 
ism had their origin in these Great Reformations, 
and every one of them began in a revival of Scrip- 
tural holiness. These various churches of the 
Reformation were not under the same church gov- 
ernment, but were bound together in a spirit of 
Christian fraternity. The word "Philadelphia" 
means "brotherly love," and hence the church in 
that city was chosen to represent the churches of 
the Reformation. Against this church there is no 
condemnation, but Jesus says "He set before it an 
open door which no man could shut." God provi- 
dentially opened up to the churches of the Reforma- 
tion, all of England, and Germany, and the West- 
ern world, which was a fulfillment of the words, "I 
have set before thee an open door." At the close 



22 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



of the message to the Church of Philadelphia, 
Jesus says, "Behold I come quickly, see that no 
man take thy crown." Here is an intimation, that 
from the time of the churches of the Reformation, 
the coming of the Lord would begin to be mani- 
fested to his servants, and warning the church of 
that period to hold fast to the liberty and holiness 
to which it had attained, that it might be prepared 
to be glorified with Christ, and with Him wear the 
crown of dominion through the Millennial Age. 

''The Church of Laodicea" covers the period of 
the backsliding of all the Protestant churches, 
down to the time when Christ shall appear to 
glorify the saints, and institute His reign on earth. 
We are now living in this period, which proves 
that the end of this Age is nearly finished. Jesus 
says of the church of this period, "I know 
thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot." 
That is, the churches are full of various kinds of 
works, but the works £„re partly spiritual, and 
partly political, and partly scientific, and partly of 
a mere social character, so that the whole is char- 
acterized by lukewarmness. The church of this 
period, boasts that she is rich, and increased with 
goods, and has need of nothing, which is exactly 
the case in the various denominations of churches 
at the present time. They build fine structures, 
and great universities, and have great ecclesiastical 
gatherings, and complicated church machinery, 
and boast of their learning, and culture, and 
science, and art, and eloquence, and music, and 
statistics, and are intoxicated with the dream that 



THE SEVEN CHURCHES. 23 

they are going to conquer the world, and thereby 
bring the millennium, without the personal and 
visible presence of Jesus. But amid all this boast- 
ing the Infinite Searcher of hearts declares that 
these churches are wretched, and miserable, and 
poor, and blind, and naked. They are destitute of 
real heart sanctification, humility of mind, and per- 
sonal affection for God, and the blessed indwelling 
of the personal Holy Ghost, they deny the super- 
natural in the pentecostal displays of saving power, 
do not believe in deep emotional religion, or in re- 
markable manifestations, or in ^divine healing, or 
in those heavenly corruscations of spiritual fire, 
and love, that characterized' the Church of Pente- 
cost, and the early days of reformation. It is of 
this church, that Jesus says, "I am about to vomit 
them out of my mouth." (See Greek.) It is in 
this period of the Laodicean church, that God has 
started the great movement of Christian holiness, 
which has swept for 25 or 30 years through the 
churches of Christendom, and this movement of 
sanctification is the hand of God, knocking at the 
door of all these modern churches, and appealing 
to their individual members, that if any one of 
them will open the door, Christ will enter in and 
cleanse and fill such an one, and sup with him 
preliminary to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, 
which is soon to transpire, when He gathers out 
His elect saints at His appearing. This is the 
closing message to all the churches of the present 
Gentile Age. 

In the following chapters, let us go back and re- 



24 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



view the various promises made to these churches, 
and see what are the qualifications, and the steps 
of spiritual victory, requisite for obtaining a place 
at the table of the Marriage Supper, and a place 
in the government of the Millennial Kingdom. 



CHAPTER III. 

* 'HEAR WHAT THE SPIRIT SAITH. " 
Rev. 2:7. 

AMONG the very first conditions of being quali- 
fied for membership in the Bridehood of Jesus 
is that of having a willing and obedient heart to hear 
voice of the Holy Spirit. Seven times within the the 
limits of the second and third chapters of Revela- 
tion, Jesus commands us to hear what the Spirit 
shall say. Our Savior tells us that nobody can 
come to the Son of God, except the Father shall 
draw him. It is the office of the Father, through 
the operation of His law applied by the Spirit, to 
awaken us and draw us in the spirit of repentance, 
to go to Jesus for pardon and renewal of life. Then 
when Jesus receives us, and remits our sins, and 
gives us power to become sons of God. He then 
leads us to the personality and fullness of the Holy 
Spirit. He tells us to tarry until we are endued 
with power from on high, and that He will pray the 
Father, and we shall receive another Comforter, 
which is the Holy Ghost, who will sanctify us 



HEAR WHAT THE SPIRIT SAITH. 



25 



through the truth, and take the things of Christ, 
and reveal them unto us. When it is said, the Lord 
is my Shepherd, and He leadeth me beside the still 
waters, it is simply a picture of Jesus, after saving 
us from our sins, leading us to the clear river of 
the ever-flowing Holy Spirit, that we may be filled 
with pure love, and put under the dominion of the 
abiding Comforter. Then, when the Holy Spirit 
gets possession of our nature and life, He in turn 
leads us back to the eternal Father, and reveals to 
us in ever-widening and brightening fields of light, 
the personalities, and love, paid fellowship, of the 
Father and the Son. The Father leads us to the 
Son, and the Son leads us to the Holy Spirit, and 
the Holy Spirit leads us back to the uncreated and 
unbegotten person of the Father, from whom 
eternally comes the Son, and from whom eternal- 
ly proceeds the Holy Spirit. This is the beau- 
tiful, fascinating circuit, around which the re- 
deemed soul travels, with ever-increasing light 
and love. 

1. In order to hear what the Spirit saith, we 
must have ears that are Spiritual, to know His 
voice. Man has a body, Greek soma, and a soul, 
Greek psycJie, from which we get the word 
"psychological," and then he has a spirit, Greek 
pneuma. A failure to recognize this threefold 
nature of man, has been the cause of a thousand 
blunders in religious teaching and experience. 

The great mass of professed Christians simply 
regard man in his twofold nature, of body and 
soul, and thereby confound the reasoning faculties, 



26 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



with man's moral and spiritual being, and hence 
regard the Christian religion as a mere system of 
doctrines, and opinions, and creeds, and that re- 
ligious experience is merely on the plain of the 
natural, mental faculties, a mere thing of senti- 
ment and psychology. The Scriptures abundantly - 
teach us, that there is an "inner man" of the 
spiritual nature, and that this "inner man" has 
spiritual senses of hearing, seeing, touching, tast- 
ing, and smelling, and is endowed with spiritual 
intuitions, and instincts, which are just as definite 
and real as those which the body has in connection 
w T ith the nervous and mental system. In the case 
of the natural man, this spiritual nature is utterly 
dormant, the inner senses are there, but closed in a 
state of sleep. There are certain animals that 
hibernate during the winter, or lie frozen for 
months in the ground, and are utterly unconscious 
of life or sensation. But in the spring they thaw 
out, and their senses are brought to life by the 
warm sun, then they can see and hear and move. 
In like manner the spirit of a sinner is in a state of 
moral death, as if frozen, but under the warm light 
of repentance, and saving faith, and the new birth, 
these inner spiritual faculties are open to con- 
sciousness, and the play of divine things upon 
them. Then, under the sanctifying power of the 
Holy Spirit, these senses of the inner spirit are 
purified, and intensified, and enlarged, so that they 
can detect the sights, and sounds, and sweetness, 
and beauty, and realty of spiritual things, of divine 
truth, and divine personalities, and heavenly ex- 



HEAR WHAT THE SPIRIT SAITH. 27 



periences. This is why our Lord says so often, 
"He that hath ears to hear let him hear." 

2. Unless we have this threefold nature of man 
in mind, and clearly recognize the realm of the 
inner spirit, as being that part of our nature, upon 
which the Holy Ghost operates in a direct manner, 
producing supernatural and heavenly experiences, 
we will never understand the full teachings of 
Scripture, or the real sphere of the spiritual life. 
The soul is that part of our nature which looks out 
through the body, toward the realm of nature, 
through the bodily senses, with its reason, com- 
parison, and natural affections, and sentiments, and 
emotions. Our inner spirit opens out toward God, 
and toward the whole supernatural world. There are 
two words for ' k love" in the Greek Testament, one is 
pJiilia, which always means human love, and should 
have been translated uniformly by our word "affec- 
* tion. The other word is in the Greek agape, which 
invariably means divine love. Now the word jrfiilia. 
or human affection, has its seat in the soul, in the 
mental nature, but the word agape, divine love, has 
its seat in the inner spirit. Hence those two words 
in their uses in the Greek Testament, mark the dis- 
tinction between man's soulish nature, and spiritual 
nature. Now there are myriads of professed 
Christians, who have never had their spiritual na- 
ture thoroughly aroused, and renewed, but who 
have a mental religion, and love God merely in 
their human, soulish pliilia, or human affection. 
Thousands on thousands in the church, love God 
just about like they love the founders of their coun- 



-28 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



try, or as they love their political parties, or their 
earthly friends. Such persons are not saved, and 
it is exceedingly difficult to get them to see the 
need of a divine, supernatural salvation. This 
truth is forcibly manifested in the conversation 
which James had with Peter, just before our Sa- 
vior's ascension. After restoring the disciples to 
Himself, after His resurrection, Jesus said to Peter, 
who claimed to love Christ more than anybody else, 
"Simon, do you have divine love for me?" (Greek 
Agape.) Peter said. "Thou knowest I have human 
affection for you/' (Greek Philia. ) The second 
time, Jesus said. "Have you divine love for me?" 
and the second time, Peter said. "I have human 
^affection for you." And then the third time, Jesus 
-dropped down to the level of Peter's human love, 
and said. "Do you really have human affection for 
me?" and this pierced Peter's heart to the core. 
But after pentecost. Peter rose to the level of 
Christ's spiritual love, and used the word agape. 
divine love, ever after. Xow in order for us to 
hear what the Spirit saith. we must be spiritual 
beings, with our spiritual uature vitalized, and 
illuminated, so that we can recognize things in the 
spiritual world, just as readily and vividly, as our 
inward senses recognize the phenomena of the ma- 
terial world. 

3. When our inward spirits are thoroughly puri- 
fied, and tilled with the indwelling Comforter, it 
becomes by far the dominant and controlling part 
of our compound being. Persons who live on the 
plane of the animal nature, regard the body and its 



HEAR WHAT THE SPIRIT SAITH. 



29 



senses as all-powerful. But persons who have 
their soulish nature enlarged, and exercised, and 
their minds greatly illuminated, and educated, 
come to realize that the mind is greater than the 
body. But when the spirit is thoroughly purified, 
and supernaturalized by the great floods of pure 
love, and divine light, it arises to an altitude of 
strength, and dominion, over all the reasoning 
faculties, and the bodily senses. It is in this con- 
dition, that the imagination and reasoning and pro- 
pensities of the mind and the body, are brought in 
subjection to that lofty, and serene Christ-life, 
which is spoken of by the apostle. 

4. The Holy Spirit who made the voice, and made 
language, can most certainly utter Himself in the 
inner being of His own children, in such a way as 
to be clearly understood. The inner spirit of man 
is the region of intuition, and the birthplace of 
axiomatic truisms. As the body has its appetites, 
and senses, and as the mind has its reasoning, so 
the spirit has its intuition, and instinctive percep- 
tion of divine verities. Hence the Holy Spirit 
speaks to us through the channel of these intuitions, 
which always act instantaneously, and independent 
of our surroundings, and superior to logic. The 
Spirit often speaks to us by inward mental voices, 
distinctly recognized by the spiritual ear, and this 
voice may be at times, so penetrating, and distinct, 
that it seems an audible voice uttered through the' 
air upon the outward ear, as in the case of young 
Samuel. The Holy Spirit may again speak to us, 
by vision, that is by flashing upon the inward re- 



30 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



tina of our spirit, a beautiful vista of light, or open 
up spiritual scenery, and spiritual events, to the 
interior eye of the mind, which are oftentimes more 
indelibly fastened upon us than any scene in nature. 
He may also speak to us through dreams. If we 
belong to God, we are just as much His when we 
are asleep as when we are awake, and in all gener- 
ations the Holy Spirit has spoken to His servants 
in the dreams of night, and when He so speaks, 
there is something so peculiar and extraordinary 
in it, that the believer never confounds such dreams 
with the ordinary vagaries of a lawless imagina- 
tion. At other times He speaks to us through His 
w 7 ord, by directing to some special passage, or 
marvelously lighting up some obscurity in the 
Scriptures, or revealing whole trains of new truth. 
Again He speaks to us through our love nature, 
drawing us out after God, with intense yearnings 
and sweet attractions towards the things He wants 
us to know. Again He speaks to us by giving ex- 
traordinary discernment into the movements of 
Providence, and causing us to see through the net- 
work of His government in the affairs of men as 
through a thin veil. The ignoring of the voice of 
the Holy Spirit is the bane of modern Christianity, 
which has fallen below the plane of the supernat- 
ural, and recognizes nothing but the laws of nature, 
by which is meant the physical world, and the pro- 
cesses of carnal reason. 

5. Many think it is dangerous to get into a spirit- 
ual realm, where we can hear the voice of God 
and become familiar with supernatural phenomena 



HEAR WHAT THE SPIRIT SAITH. 31 



in the life of the soul. But the danger lies in a 
fictitious religion, which is open to all the devices 
of Satan. It is always dangerous to run a ship in 
shallow water, and real safety lies in going out to 
sea. So with the spiritual life, the danger lies in 
a lack of the Holy Spirit. The blessed Holy Ghost 
is as safe a guide as is the eternal Father, or the 
lowly Jesus, and it must grieve His infinite loving 
nature that myriads of professed Christians are 
afraid of Him, and will not dare trust themselves 
to His full possession. The Holy Spirit in all the 
manifold operations within us, will never do a thing 
that contradicts the revealed word of God, or that 
clashes with a manifest Divine Providence. God 
cannot antagonize Himself, and the inner and the 
outer movements of His will are always found to 
harmonize. It is the reality of the abiding Holy 
Spirit within us, bringing us into conscious com- 
munion with the three persons of the one ever- 
blessed God, and speaking to us through His many- 
languaged dialect, that gives real supernatural 
power to our lives, and puts into our work a divine 
force, and makes us in many instances an incom- 
prehensible enigma to carnal people, just because 
He is making us more beautifully intelligible to 
that innumerable company of angels, and the spirits 
of just men made perfect, and the church of the 
first bom, into whose blessed fellowship we are 
brought by the Spirit of glory and of God which 
abides in us. 



32 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



CHAPTER IV. 

4 4 EAT OF THE TREE OF LIFE." 
Rev. 2:7. 

TO each of the seven churches Jesus makes a 
special promise if they will overcome. These 
special promises are doubtless given with an infinite 
fitness of wisdom, in connection with the several 
churches, and also in connection w T ith the true, vic- 
torious believers, in the several stages of Christian- 
ity, set forth by the seven churches. But in all 
correct interpretations of Scripture we must re- 
member that it always has more than one fulfill- 
ment. The same Scripture has one fulfillment in 
the individual, and another in the collective body 
of believers. It has one fulfillment in the inner, 
spiritual life, and another in the outw T ard, vis- 
ible, and providential history. It has one fulfill- 
ment in the present Age, and another in the 
coming Age of glorification. Hence to confine 
any one scripture to a single application will 
lead to much error and misunderstanding of 
many portions of God's word. This is what the 
apostle means, when he says "no scripture is of 
any private interpretation," that is, it must not be 
confined to one single application, as only to one 
person, or one place. Thus while these several 
promises, given to the seven churches, had a fit- 
ness to those churches as they then existed in 
Asia, the same promises have had a special fitness 



EAT OP THE TREE OF LIFE. 



33 



to the real overcoming believers in the various 
seven stages of the history of the church, and 
furthermore they have a beautiful and close fitting 
application to the various steps of the individual 
believer, as he progresses from the new birth 
through all the degrees of Christian life, till he 
reaches his place in the Millennial Kingdom 
with Jesus. We shall find a regular consecutive 
order in these promises, which resemble the steps 
up to a throne. The first of these promises in- 
volves the impartation of the divine life to the be- 
liever. To him that will hear what the Spirit saith, 
and overcome his sins, Jesus says, 4 'I will give him 
to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of 
the Paradise of God." Various truths which grow 
out of this promise may be arranged as follows: 

1. ' God cannot bless nothing. He must have some 
living being upon whom to confer His blessings. 
Hence, throughout all Scripture, the impartation 
of life is the fundamental work of God, both in 
creation and redemption. Before the Creator could 
bless Adam, or confer upon him the rights of do- 
minion, He must "breathe into his nostrils the 
breath of life, and -make him a living soul." In 
the twelvefold blessing that Moses promised upon 
the tribes of Israel, the first one was the blessing 
of life. He said, "Let Reuben live," and from that 
fundamental blessing of life, all the other twelve 
blessings are arranged, in a consecutive order of 
ascending blessings, arising to a climax. The same 
thing is true of these seven overcomeths, which 
begins by eating the tree of life, and proceeds in 

3 



34 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



a beautiful ascending climax of promise and bless- 
ing, until the victorious believer is glorified, and 
sits with his Lord in the Millennial Throne . 

2. The life that Jesus imparts to the soul in re- 
generation is emphatically a divine life, and yet it 
is in some mysterious sense a different species of 
life from that which the angels and other holy and 
intelligent beings of other worlds may have. 
There is nothing more marvelous and bewildering 
in all the universe than life, and then the almost 
infinite variety of life. There are seven different 
types, or grades of life, cognizable to our thought. 
The lowest is mineral life, for the very rocks 
grow, and have a life which we cannot search out. 
Then comes infusorial life, which doubtless em- 
braces numberless species, and covers that terri- 
tory that lies between minerals and vegetables. 
Then comes vegetable life, which fills an enormous 
region' in nature, extending from microscopical 
plants, and mosses, up to the gigantic trees of 
California, hundreds of feet high, and thousands 
of years old. The different species of vegetable 
life have perhaps never yet been numbered. Next 
comes the great world of animal life, extending 
from insects so small that the natural vision can 
not see them, to the great elephant, and whale 
varieties. Next comes the mental, or what the 
Greeks would call, the soulish life. This takes 
in the natural feelings, passions, and affections of 
the human soul, apart from divine grace. And 
away above these is the life of grace, the divine 
life, through Jesus imparted to the immortal 



EAT OF THE TREE OF LIFE. 



35 



Spirit in the new birth, by which we become sons 
of God, being born from above, born of the Holy- 
Spirit. And then, towering above this in altitude 
far out of sight, is the life of glorification, which 
is so powerful that it swallows up death in victory. 
Now we see that between each of these Kingdoms 
of life, there are great and impassable gulfs, across 
which no development, or evolution, or mingling 
of species, can possibly construct a bridge. The 
fiat of God holds true with regard to each King- 
dom of life, namely, that which is born of the flesh 
is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is 
spirit, This divine decree is an impassable wall 
between each Kingdom of life, which cannot be 
climbed over. That which is born of vegetable is 
vegetable, that which is born of animal is animal, 
that which is born of the Holy Spirit is spiritual, 
and that which is born into a glorified realm is 
glorified. Hence it is eternally impossible for the 
natural life of the soul, to develop into a spiritual 
life, without the intervention of a supernatural and 
Heavenly birth. Now as there are hundreds of 
different species of life in the same life kingdom, 
such as the varying species of vegetable and 
of animal life, so it is very evident there are 
many species of spiritual life, and when a sin- 
ner is pardoned and regenerated through the 
virtue of the death of Jesus, and by the Holy 
Ghost, it is certain he receives into his spirit a 
divine life, and yet it is not the exact form or 
variety of spiritual life that an unf alien angel pos- 
sesses. It may be, and likely is, a higher species 



36 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



of divine life, than that of the angels, because it is 
transmitted through the incarnation and sacrifice 
of the second person in the Godhead. It is not 
only a divine life, but a divine life which comes 
through the incarnation of a divine person. Every 
type of life is a fathomless mystery, and can never 
be searched out by science. In making experi- 
ments upon vital protoplasm, through the finest 
microscopes, it is impossible to detect in the earliest 
stages of any living thing, the difference between 
one creature and another. The vital substance, 
or protoplasm, of a bird, or worm, or vegetable, or 
four-footed animal, or a human being, in the 
earliest inception of its existence, all look alike. 
And yet there is in each of these creatures, an in- 
visible potency, which no human eye can discover, 
but which differentiates each life from the other, 
and as the life grows, it shows to what kingdom it 
belongs. When the Holy Ghost regenerates a 
penitent believer, he deposits divine truth and love 
and life into the immortal spirit of the man, and as 
that life grows, and takes on volume, and force, if 
the hindrances of that life are purged away, and it 
is properly nourished, it will infallibly show itself 
to be like the man Christ Jesus, with as much cer- 
tainty as the life germ of an eagle, or a lamb, will 
come to the estate of the eagle or the lamb. 

3. The term Tree of Life is very significant. Any 
tree is a divine poem, a marvelous creation of wis- 
dom, which no mind of man has yet fathomed. A 
fruit tree is an exquisite and intricate type of the 
Lord Jesus. There lie hid away in the bosom of 



EAT OF THE TREE OP LIFE. 



37 



the earth, inexhaustable resources of chemical 
juices, sufficient to feed millions of population. 
But how can we get that ocean of unseen juices out 
of the earth, converted into fruit for the sustenance 
of these hungry millions? A fruit tree is God's in- 
vention to mediate between earth's juices and the 
mouths of the hungry multitudes. The tree spreads 
its roots out, deep and broad, in the soil, and gath- 
ers up, with mysterious energy, the heat and light 
of the sun, the sugar, and starch, and other nour- 
ishing substances, and gases, from the earth, the 
rain, and the air, and through its trunk and by its 
sap, transmutes all these into blossom, and de- 
licious fruit, and the multitudes are fed. The 
earth in this case represents the infinite and eter- 
nal substance of the three persons in the Godhead, 
and the incarnation of the eternal Son, in a human 
Body, and a human Soul, coming forth in our 
world, is like that tree. He draws up into His 
precious body the attributes and qualities of the 
infinite divinity, and transmutes them into a form 
of life, which by faith we can eat of, and be nour- 
ished thereby in our spirits, just as really as our 
bodies feed on the fruit, which the tree has 
brought to us out of the unseen ^storehouses of the 
earth. The humanity of Jesus is the trunk of the 
tree, through which we receive divine love, and 
perhaps we shall see in eternity, as we cannot 
now, that we get a higher measure and sweeter 
form of divine love, through the humanity of the 
Son of God, than could possibly have been trans- 
mitted to us in any other manner. 



38 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



4. This promise will doubtless have its ultimate 
fulfillment in the glorified state. There may be 
literal trees of life in the Paradise of God, upon 
whose fruit glorified creatures live. There is noth- 
ing in the word of God, or the analogies of Chris- 
tian reason, to contradict such a conclusion. And 
we will have occasion to revert to this again farther 
on in this book. But if such is the case, they will 
still be but blessed visible emblems of that divine 
nourishment, that eternal banquet, which will be 
furnished to our immortal spirits, through the 
glorified humanity of Jesus. What a joy it is for 
any created thing to live, and every living thing 
has a mysterious pleasure in its life. But the joy 
of living the Christ life, must surpass all others. 
To love with the same love that Jesus had, to think 
over His thoughts, to feel with His sympathies, to 
share the interior instincts of His heart, to pray out 
of the breath of His prayers, to grow with His 
growth, and to know in the light of His knowledge, 
this is the glorious calling that God offers to peni- 
tent sinners, this is to eat of the tree of life. 



CHAPTER V. 

"NOT HURT OF THE SECOND DEATH." 
Rev. 2:1 1 

THE next step in the qualification for obtaining 
a place of royalty with Jesus, is that of so over- 
coming by faith of all the difficulties in the way of 



NOT HURT OF THE SECOND DEATH. 



39 



Christian growth, as not to be hurt of the second 
death. In order to understand what the second 
death is, we must have a scriptural knowledge of 
what is the first death. When God told Adam that 
in the day he ate of the fruit of the tree of good 
and evil, he should surely die; the literal rendering 
would be, 4 'in dying, thou shalt surely die." That 
is in the day he ate of the fruit, he would begin to 
die, and that death would be consummated in a 
complete death, both spiritually and physically. 
Adam did die spiritually, in the loss of primitive 
holiness, and though his body lived nearly a thou- 
sand years, yet it at last yielded to mortality. Now 
the first death is that which is entailed upon us by 
the fall of our first parents. Death nowhere means 
annihilation, but simply the separation of any liv- 
ing being or organ, from its true foundation of life. 
Hence spiritual death is the separation of the 
human spirit from God, who is the ceaseless foun- 
tain of holiness and love, and when the soul breaks 
company with the Spirit of God, and loses inward 
purity and holy love, it enters a state of soul 
death. And the death of the body consists, not in 
the destruction of a single particle of the bodily 
organism, but in the separation of the body 
from the animating soul which inhabits it. A 
piece of plank was once a living tree, but it has 
been separated from the vital sap which once 
flowed in it, and is dead, but not one atom of it is 
annihilated. So Satan and all his evil angels, were 
once in their primitive creation in fellowship with 
God, but they have broken union with the eternal 



40 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



fountain of love, and are utterly dead in sin, and 
filled with, iniquity, yet not annihilated, nor have 
any of their original faculties or capabilities been 
destroyed, but are utterly perverted in a life of 
sin. Hence the iniquitous heresy of the annihila- 
tion of men's souls is a delusion of Satan, and 
comes from an ignorant confounding of the term 
death, with non-existence. Now this first death, 
which comes from Adam, both morally and physi- 
cally, has been atoned for by the incarnation and 
death of the Son of God. So that no human being 
will ever be finally lost because of Adam's trans- 
gression. Jesus has purchased, by His sufferings 
and death and resurrection, an absolute indemnity 
from the fall of Adam, making ample provision 
for all of the consequences of Adam's transgres- 
sion, both for the removal of all original sin. and 
the raising again from the dead every human being. 
Every infant born in the human race comes into 
being under the covenant of redeeming grace. We 
are expressly told that, 4 'as in Adam all died, so in 
Christ shall all be made alive." From this we learn 
that the iniquity of Adam, as an open trans- 
gressor, is not imputed to any infant in the form of 
actual guilt, and that the principle of indwelling 
sin, which is in the infant, has its ample remedy in 
the shed blood of Jesus, and if the infant dies be- 
fore reaching the age of accountability, its nature 
is thoroughly purified, on the basis of the covenant 
w T hich the Son of God made with the Father, as 
the second Adam, and true head of the race. Thus 
we see that of all the millions of human beings, 



NOT HURT OF THE SECOND DEATH. 



41 



who may be finally lost, not one of them will be 
permitted to attribute his everlasting woe to our 
first parents. God will never allow any human 
being to attribute his ruin and perdition to another 
fellow-creature. He has dealt with the human 
race on such an enormous scale of mercy, and 
justice, and equity, and redeeming love, and im- 
partiality, that every one will be compelled to at- 
tribute his ruin to himself. Thus the first death, 
both morally and physically, flows out from the 
first fall of the race of Adam, and the race have ail 
been redeemed from that first fall, and that first 
death. Now let us remember that Jesus is the 
second Adam, and the second head of the race. If, 
when we come to years of accountability, we turn 
away from the Lord Jesus, "who is the second man 
from Heaven," and persistently turn away from 
Him, rejecting or postponing the salvation he offers 
us, and die in that attitude of rejection or neglect, 
we thereby fall a second time, and plunge into a 
second death. The apostle tells us that there is 
only one sacrifice for sins, and if we turn away 
from that one Savior, there can be found no other 
redeemer, but a fearful looking for of judgment, 
and of firey indignation from the Lord. This 
second fall, resulting from the rejection of Jesus, 
entails a second death in the utter separation of 
the soul from all fellowship with God, and all the 
touches of His grace, and also the banishment of 
the soul and body into the torments of hell, with 
the devil and his angels. We see that with regard 
to the first fall, and the first death, there is a limit. 



42 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



God's covenant of redemption rushes in to inter- 
vene, and stop the results that would naturally flow 
from the first fall, and the first death, in order that 
every creature may have the advantages of saving 
grace. The second fall and the second death have 
no limits to them, but their sad and awful conse- 
quences flow on forever. The same terms of dura- 
tion which are used in Scripture concerning the 
destiny of the saved are also used concerning the 
destiny of the lost. There is no Greek word which 
exactly corresponds with our word "eternity,*" but 
the word used in the Greek Testament is that of 
"ages of the ages.*' And when it speaks of our 
having eternal life, it is that of living to the "ages 
of the ages,*' and these same terms are used ex- 
pressive of the duration of the lost. It requires as 
much grace to keep us saved as it does to save us 
in the first place. In fact our continuance in sal- 
vation is but a prolonged and extended act of saving 
grace. So that when we are born of God, and eat 
of the tree of life, we are by faith to continue in 
the path of overcoming, lest we lose that life and 
drift away from the Lord Jesus, and fall into the 
second death. There are scores of scriptures 
which teach emphatically that after having once 
been saved, the soul may lose its grace and sink 
into utter darkness. In the 5th verse of the epistle 
of Jude, where our version says, "that after the 
Lord saved the Jewish people out of the land of 
Egypt, He afterward destroyed them that believed 
not,"' in the Greek it says, "that after he saved 
them from Egypt they were destroyed because 



THE HIDDEN MANNA. 



43 



they would not believe a second time," that is, they 
had faith to cross the Red Sea, but would not have 
faith to go into Canaan. And then the apostle 
Peter tells us (as translated in the common ver- 
sion) it were better for us not to have known 
the way of righteousness than after we have 
known it to turn from the holy commandment, 
but in the Greek it reads, it were better for us 
not to have known the way of justification, than 
after we have known it, "to turn from the com- 
mandment to be holy." This is exactly what 
thousands have done, commenced to live by faith, 
and been justified by faith, and then utterly re- 
jected the commandment concerning holiness, and 
have forfeited all they gained, and in many in- 
stances they have utterly rejected Jesus and fallen 
into the second death. So this promise in the 
second overcometh is exceedingly vital. It re- 
quires an overcoming faith not only to be born 
again, but to keep from backsliding and falling into 
the second death. 



CHAPTER VI. 

"THE HIDDEN MANNA." 
Rev. 2:17. 

THE next step in the series of qualifications for 
reigning with Christ is that of entering the 
second veil, and having access to the ark of the 



44 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



covenant, and eating of the hidden manna. Jesus 
says to the believer who reaches the third over- 
cometh, "I will give him to eat of the hidden 
manna." 

In this step we have the doctrine and experience 
of sanctification. Although holiness is not defi- 
nitely mentioned in this verse, yet it is emphatic- 
ally and fully expressed by emblem. Any truth 
set forth in Scripture by an inspired type is just as 
truly accurate as when set forth by a didactic state- 
ment. Thus we are taught in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews that the first veil represents regenera- 
tion, which is the beginning of the holy life, and 
that the second veil represents the perfecting of 
holiness and the full baptism of the Spirit as the 
shekinah flame between the wings of the cherubim. 
We see from the typology in this promise that the 
experience of sanctification is always j^laced, in 
-Scripture, soon after the work of regeneration. 
The great mass of the nominal church have an im- 
pression that Christian holiness must come very 
late in life, that it is by the added growth of long 
years of Christian service, and many suppose it is 
hardly consciously received until about the time of 
death. But all such views are the result of mis- 
education, and of the natural unbelief of the hu- 
man heart. Throughout all Scripture, both in pre- 
cept and type, the blessed work of heart purity and 
the fullness of the Spirit are set forth as coming 
soon after conversion. Thus the crossing of the 
Red Sea is a type of the new birth, and the crossing 
of the Jordan is a type of sanctification, and we see 



THE HIDDEN MANNA. 



45 



from the history in Exodus it was God's design 
that the Israelites should not stay very long in the 
wilderness, but come up in a few months and pos- 
sess the promised land. In like manner it is His 
expressed will that all young.converts should come 
up soon after justification into the inheritance of 
the baptism of the Holy Spirit. 

Also in the slaying of the passover lamb and the 
sprinkling of the blood upon the door posts w T e 
have a type of the penitent coming to Jesus to get- 
under His shed blood. But it was just fifty days 
from that event to the Feast of Pentecost, or the 
baptism of the Holy Spirit, proving by clear Scrip- 
ture type that the believer should receive the sanc- 
tifying gift of the Holy Spirit not later than fifty 
days from his justification. 

The same truth is taught in manifold forms of 
expression and imagery in the Bible. Thus in these 
seven overcomeths we find the third step in the 
series to be a definite promise of sanctification. 
To understand the purport of this proniise of eat- 
ing the hidden manna more perfectly, let us refer 
back to the history of the manna in the writings of 
Moses. We there read that the manna fell on the 
open plain every night, and every morning the 
people gathered it up, and ground it and made it 
into cakes of bread. This manna was not hidden, 
but open to the gaze of all the people. When the 
Ark of the Covenant and the Tabernacle were con- 
structed God told Moses to make a golden pot, and 
gather up some of this manna that lay on the 
ground and put it in the golden pot, and put the 



46 



STEPS -TO THE THRONE. 



pot in the Ark of the Covenant, and put the Ark 
in the second veil, or the holy of holies. This 
manna thus preserved in the Ark was "the hidden 
manna." Now in order to eat any of that hidden 
manna a person must- of necessity go through the 
first veil, which is the holy place, and then enter 
the second veil into the holy of holies. Thus we 
see that no one could eat of that manna except he 
entered into the second veil, which is nothing less 
or more than the state of entering heart purity and 
perfect love. 

In this connection it will be very interesting to 
notice what were the contents of the Ark of the 
Covenant. We are taught both by Moses and Paul 
that the sacred Ark was a type of the Lord Jesus, 
the acacia wood being a type of His humanity, and 
the covering of pure gold a type of His divinity, 
that this Ark contained first the two tables of stone 
upon which God had written the ten command- 
ments, and next the almond rod that Aaron held 
in his hand, and that budded and bore almonds, and 
next the golden pot containing the manna. Now 
all three of these things significantly set forth the 
living word of God. The tables of stone repre- 
sent God's word in the form of law. The almond 
rod represents this word in the form of promise, 
and the hidden manna, sweet and nourishing to the 
taste, represents it in the form of fruition and ex- 
perience. 

Thus God's word comes to us first as an inflexible 
command, arresting us and putting us under con- 
viction for our sins and the need of salvation. 



THE HIDDEN MANNA. 



47 



Next the message reaches us in the form of 
promise, with its buds and blossoms of hope and 
faith. Then the word comes to ns as an inward 
conscious experience. That is the sweet manna. 
It is also worthy of notice, that each of these things 
in the Ark had a two-fold exhibition. The tables 
of stone were given twice. When Moses went 
down from the mountain, with the two tables con- 
taining the ten commandments, and saw the people 
in the act of idolatry, he dashed the tables to the 
ground, and they were broken. Afterwards God 
wrote the same words on two other stone tablets 
which Moses himself had to furnish. This sets 
forth the two covenants, the one in the flesh and 
the other in the spirit, referred to by Jeremiah and 
Paul. Then Aaron's rod was laid up all night be- 
fore the Lord, and after it budded and blossomed, 
to distinguish him as the true priest from the false 
pretenders, the same rod was laid up a second time 
before the Lord. In this we see a type of the two 
works of grace. Also the hidden manna had two 
manifestations, one on the open ground from 
whence it was gathered every day, and then the 
hidden manna preserved in the Ark. 

These things could not happen by chance, but 
all the details set forth unmistakably the two great 
works of saving grace, the one in saving from 
wrath, and the other purifying us for the heavenly 
life. The manna that fell on the ground would last 
only a day, typifying the transitoriness of the 
blessings and forms of nourishment in the lower 
state of grace, but the manna in the golden pot, 



48 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



kept sweet for a thousand years, indicating the 
permanent blessedness and richness of our spiritual 
lives while we dwell in the holy of holies and under 
the direct operation of the abiding Comforter. 
The manna is the very life of Christ, upon which 
all believers feed, and we must remember that the 
manna which lay on the ground every morning, and 
that w T hich w r as preserved in the golden pot, w T ere 
exactly alike, but each existed under different cir- 
cumstances, and in a different relationship. 

In like manner all believers live on the Lord 
Jesus, but there is a feeding on Christ in His out- 
ward life, and then there is an entering into His 
inner life, and by a thorough crucifixion with Him, 
and unlimited abandonment to His will, the soul en- 
ters into the inner region of Christ's spiritual life. 
Thus the apostle tells us that when we enter the 
holy of holies, we are to go through the veil which 
is the rent flesh of Jesus, by which w r e pass into 
His very heart life. And Jesus tells us that after 
w r e have found the first rest, we are to take His 
yoke upon us, and learn the secret of His inner 
being, that He is meek and low 7 ly in heart, and 
then we shall find deep, permanent rest to our 
souls. 

Thus the truth is spread out before us, under 
various forms of expression, that w^e are not 
merely to know Christ according to His outward 
life in the flesh, but to enter the secret recesses 
and fountains of His inner being, and know Him, 
in the language of the apostle, "according to the 
power of the endless life.*' This participation of 



THE HIDDEN MANNA. 



49 



the inner life of Jesus is the real hidden manna, 
which He offers to all those who are overcomers. 

I may say in concluding this chapter that it is 
highly probable that the Ark of the Covenant was 
preserved at the time that the temple and Jerusa- 
lem were destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, when the 
Jews were carried away into captivity. We read in 
the book of Maccabees in the Apocrypha, that God 
told Jeremiah to take some man with him, and take 
the Ark of the Covenant, with the curtains belong- 
ing to it, and carry it to the east of the Jordan, and 
hide it in a cave in Mount Nebo, where Moses died, 
in the place that God would show him, and cover 
the cave over with a stone, and that no one should 
discover it until the Lord should come to reign in 
His glory on the earth. And in the account which 
Jeremiah gives us of the capture of Jerusalem and 
the carrying aw x ay of the treasures of the temple 
into Babylon, He makes no mention of the Baby- 
lonians taking the Ark. Hence we have no grounds 
for doubting the accuracy of the account in the 
Apocrypha, and, if it be correct, then when Jesus 
comes and sets up His reign on this earth, that 
sacred Ark, which was made at Mount Sinai, will 
be brought forth from its hiding place and ex- 
hibited during the millennial reign of Christ, as a 
proof and seal of God's unbroken covenant with 
His saints in all ages. 

4 



50 



STEPS TO THE THRONE, 



CHAPTER VII. 

"THE WHITE STONE. " 
Rev. 2:17. 

THERE is another promise included in.the third 
overcometh, which is that of a pure heart, 
under the type of a pearl. Jesus says, "I will give 
to him that overcometh a white stone, and in the 
stone a new name written, which no man knoweth 
save he that receiveth it." This white stone can 
be interpreted by the words of our Savior, in which 
he says: "The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a 
merchantman seeking goodly pearls, who when he 
had found one pearl of great price, went and sold 
all that he had, and bought it." Here we see the 
pure heart, most beautifully illustrated under the 
typology of the pearl. 

To get a clearer view of this emblem, let us note 
the following points: 

1. The pearl is very valuable. They are ob- 
tained with great difficulty, and at a risk of life, 
and are sold for considerable sums. Jesus in His 
parable gives us to understand that one pearl could 
be of such magnitude and worth that a merchant 
would expend for it all of his goods and all his 
wealth. This is pre-eminently true of the infinite 
worth of a pure heart. There are many treasures 
which human beings hold very dear, and in spite 
of their greed for material riches, yet when the 
test comes the great majority of mankind hold 



THE WHITE STONE. 



51 



the treasures of good health, or of a sane mind, 
or of lofty genius, as paramount to mere material 
wealth. But God has taught us that a pure heart 
has in it a divine worth, w T hich. far exceeds all the 
riches of the material or intellectual world. Solo- 
mon gives in his Proverbs one of the finest climaxes 
in the Bible concerning the untold value of a pure 
heart, which he sets forth under the name of wis- 
dom. He says that "it is better than silver," and 
then "superior to fine gold," and then "more pre- 
cious than rubies," and then that "all the things the 
natural heart can desire are not to be compared 
unto it." The heart is the fountain of all moral 
and mental being. It is the inward spring, out of 
which flows all the diversified streams of life, and 
when the heart is thoroughly purified from every 
unlawful desire, and every unloving temper, so 
that out of its pure, pellucid depth there flows 
only the graces of the Spirit, which secures to its 
possessor advantages both in this life and the life 
to come infinitely above all price. He is the wise 
man who sells out everything in the world for this 
pearl. 

2. The pearl is formed within a living creature. 
Pearls do not grow in the open air, or exposed to 
the beating elements. They are formed within an 
oyster, hidden away in the depths of the sea. Thus 
a pure heart is formed in the very centre of an im- 
mortal being. It is not an accident, that lies ex- 
posed to outward life. It is a living thing, and has 
its seat at the very centre of moral being. 

3. The pearl is produced out of suffering, and by 



52 



STEPS TO THE THRONE, 



the crucifixion of a life. When the oyster opens 
its mouth to feed at the bottom of the sea, a small 
grain of sand is washed into it, which makes an 
incision in the soft part of the shell fish. In its 
effort, either to expel the grain, or to heal the 
wound, it emanates a saliva, which is formed around 
the grain of sand, and makes the pearl. Thus our 
hearts are made pure, through the crucifixion of 
our natural life. Our inner being of self-will, and 
selfishness, must be pierced by the sharp word of 
God. There must be a breaking down of our 
thoughts, and plans, and ambitions, and selfish 
ease, and out of this interior crucifixion, which 
makes the heart to bleed, and the eye to weep, and 
the whole self-will to succumb to the authority of 
God, there is formed the blessedness and beauty 
of a clean heart. 

4. The pearl has the character of remarkable 
beauty, among the precious gems of the earth. 
There is a delicacy, and softness of beauty about 
it, which far surpasses that of many gems, because 
it has been formed out of a living substance. In 
like manner, a heart that has been thoroughly 
washed in the blood of Jesus, and cleansed from 
all hardness, and bitterness, and impurity, and 
made soft and white and gentle by the power of 
the Holy Ghost, has in it a beauty which attracts 
the notice of the loving angels, and makes it as 
dear to God as the apple of His eye. No wonder 
that the infinite One himself has said, "that his 
eyes go to and fro throughout the whole earth, to 
show Himself strong, in the behalf of that person 



THE WHITE STONE. 



53 



whose heart is pure and perfect toward Him." The 
eyes of glorified beings can sweep over a moral 
landscape, and read the different qualities of the 
moral universe, and see the different shades and 
degrees of holiness, as swiftly and accurately, as 
our eyes can discern the fascinating face of the 
magnificent landscape, or the exquisite colors and 
perfection of a flower garden. 

The things that men prize highly in this world, 
are oftentimes an abomination in the sight of 
heavenly beings, but those who have perfectly 
humble and tender and spotless hearts, stand out 
to their gaze with extraordinary beauty and per- 
fectness. 

5. We are told in John's vision of the New Jeru- 
salem that the gates of the City were each one of 
a solid pearl. All of the Bible emblems are selected 
with infallible propriety, and as a pearl is that 
thing in the world which beautifully represents a 
pure heart, so it is that thing which represents the 
gateway into the City of God, the Heavenly Jeru- 
salem. In John's description of that City he says 
it was twelve thousand furlongs. This translated 
into our measurement would be about fifteen hun- 
dred miles. Think of a City of pure gold fifteen 
hundred miles square and fifteen hundred miles 
high, with three gates on each side, and each gate 
of one solid pearl fifteen hundred miles high and 
five hundred miles wide. Truly God is preparing 
something for His saints, the magnitude and glory 
of which will surprise the most extravagant dreams 
of earthly imagination. And yet vast and glorious 



54 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



as that vision is, Ave may each have in our own 
being, through the precious cleansing blood of 
Jesus, something which fully corresponds to it in 
a perfectly lowly and pure heart. A pure heart is 
the very gate to Heaven, and he who carries that 
gate of pearl within his own being will have no 
difficulty in obtaining an entrance to that City. 

6. In this white stone Jesus promises to inscribe 
a new name which no one can know except the per- 
son receiving it. A name in Scripture is always 
indicative of a character, hence a new name is a 
new inward character, a divine and heavenly expe- 
rience, which no one can know but the conscious 
soul in which it is wrought. Others may see the 
fruit of a pure heart and hear the testimony to that 
blessed work of grace, which has been accom- 
plished in it, and they may be convinced of the 
reality of its existence, but after all there is an in- 
ward core of our being, into which no one can be 
admitted but our Creator and Redeemer and Sanc- 
tis er. Our loving Lord has, in beautiful wisdom, 
reserved to Himself the inner chamber of our im- 
mortal souls, the fountain of consciousness, the 
secret source of character, and the home of moral 
intuitions. There is the secret fountain, where the 
Holy Spirit works the sweet miracles of saving 
grace. There are many marvelous things con- 
nected with our creation and existence, but none 
more so than the fact that God makes us each one 
to live a secret life with Himself. A life in which 
we are impenetrably walled in from all other crea- 
tures, and where He alone dwells, that is in the 



TILL I COME. 



55 



citadel of our nature. It is this ' 'white stone" of 
inward purity that God offers to work into us if we 
by faith overcome. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

* 4 TILL I COME." 
Rev. 2:25. 

THE personal coming of Jesus back to this earth 
is everywhere set forth in the New Testament 
as the acme and crown and consummation of this 
present age. In all those passages where in the 
common version it speaks of the • 'end of the world," 
the Greek says ' 'the end of the age. " And if it had 
not been for the blunder of translating the Greek 
word "age" by the word "world," there would not 
have been so much darkness and misunderstanding 
on our Lord's return to reign on this earth. Just 
as the first coming of Christ in His incarnation was 
the end of the Jewish age, and all the types and 
shadows and forms of the Jewish ceremonial re- 
ligion had their fulfillment and termination in the 
birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and 
after that the Jewish age with all its peculiar forms 
and ceremonies passed away, so the second coming 
of Christ back to this earth will be the end of the 
Gentile age, and the fulfillment and termination of 
all the present order in the Christian Church. 
When our Savior instituted the sacrament which 



56 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



commemorates His death, we are told that every 
time we partake of that sacrament k< we do show 
forth His death till he comes again.'' Hence the 
Lord's Supper is an index finger, pointing the be- 
liever throughout this age to the reappearing of his 
Lord. At the return of Christ all the Christian 
sacraments will come to an end, and also the pres- 
ent order of Christian ministry and the various 
forms of church government and manifold teach- 
ings of church theology. As all the streams flow- 
ing down the mountains find their terminus and 
rest in the bosom of the sea, so all the manifold 
streams of history in the present order of things 
will find their fulfillment and rest in the presence 
and personal reign of Jesus on this earth. 

The Jews and Gentiles for the past two thousand 
years have had separate and distinct histories of 
their own, and we are told in the New Testament 
that Jerusalem, which embodied the nationality of 
the Jews, ''should be trodden down of the Gentiles 
until the times of the Gentiles were filled.'" And 
St. Paul tells us in his epistle to the Romans that 
the Jews were cut off from the olive tree, and the 
Gentile believers, who were by nature the wild 
olive tree, were grafted into Christ, but that when 
the time of the Gentiles was ended the Jews should 
be again grafted upon the parent stock, which is 
Christ. Thus we see that at the appearing of our 
Lord these prophecies concerning the Jews and 
Gentiles will be fulfilled, and at His reign on earth 
the Jews will again be restored and accept of Him 
as their Messiah. 



TILL I COME. 



57 



This idea may still further be elaborated in its 
application to Christian stewardship. Jesus, in 
addressing the church in connection with the fourth 
overcometh, says, "but that which ye have hold 
fast till I come," proving conclusively that there is 
a certain responsibility of faith and obedience in 
the believer, which does not terminate until the com- 
ing of the Lord. 

The same truth is elaborated in the parables of 
Our Savior. We are told in the 19th chapter of 
Luke, that as Christ in His last journey approached 
Jerusalem, the people thought that the Kingdom 
of God should immediately appear, that is, they 
supposed Christ would then assume the kingship 
of His elect people, and set up His reign on the 
earth. Now we notice that Jesus did hot contra- 
dict or deny the faith that He was to reign on this 
earth, but on the other hand, he confirmed that 
faith, by speaking a parable, concerning a certain 
nobleman who went into a far country to receive a 
kingdom, and before going away, he called his ten 
servants, and delivered unto them ten pounds, and 
said to them, "occupy till I come. ,, Then He goes 
on to speak of the return of the nobleman, and of 
these ten servants rendering up their account, and 
to those of them who had been faithful, he said to 
one, "because thou hast been faithful, have thou 
authority over ten cities," and to another he said^ 
"have thou authority over five cities." This par- 
able, and also the parable of the talents, proves 
that the stewardship of Christian ministers is to 
extend until the second coming of Jesus. Even 



58 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



though God's faithful servants may die before His 
appearing, yet their work follows them. They 
still live and labor in their writings, or through 
secondary agencies, and the amount of their reward 
for faithful service, or of their punishment for neg- 
lect of their gifts, will not be fixed, until the end 
of this age when Christ returns. 

This gives us an insight into the vital relation- 
ship between the coming of Jesus and the wind- 
ing up of the history and the various responsibili- 
ties and trusteeships of the present age. This 
truth has a still further application to Christian 
character and experience. Instead of regarding 
the coming of Jesus as a mere trifling matter 
which has but little connection with Christian 
faith and experience, we find in the New Testament 
that it is continually put as a fundamental object of 
faith and reward, and as having a powerful re- 
lationship with our present sanctification and fitness 
to see His face and participate in His coming king- 
dom. It seems that invincible narrowmess of mind 
is one of the inevitable entailments of our la^len 
condition, and this narrowness of mind has had no 
more conspicuous exhibition than the divorcement 
of various truths in the Scripture which Goa has 
united, but which men have attempted to separate. 
A large class of people have in modern years be- 
come intensely interested in the personal coming 
of Jesus, but have studied that subject in a mere 
material and political aspect to the utter neglect of 
a deep experience in personal holiness. Many of 
them are mere materialists, denying the immor- 



TILL I COME. 



'59 



tality of the soul, and either denying or utterly ig- 
noring the necessity of a personal and full saneti- 
fication by the baptism of the Holy Spirit. On the 
other hand a large number of deeply spiritual per- 
sons who accept the full Bible teaching on per- 
sonal and full salvation as a fitness for life, as well 
as for entrance to heaven, have entirely passed 
over the subject of our Savior's return to this earth, 
and of His personal reign over the nations for a 
thousand years. They have relegated the whole 
subject of Christ's coming to what is popularly 
called ''Second Adventism,*' and in many instances 
spoken lightly or triflingly of the coming of Jesus, 
and with all their zeal and devotion for the spread 
of scriptural holiness, have stoutly maintained the 
Roman Catholic doctrine of post-millennialism, that 
is, that the church was to bring the millennium, and 
that Christ would not appear again until at the gen- 
eral judgment of both the saved and the lost. But 
w 7 hen we look into the New T Testament, w r e find 
both of these classes to be holding to mere partial 
truths. The Holy Spirit has blended these great 
truths into unity, and taught us in scores of places 
the direct connection betw T een scriptural holiness 
and the pro -millennial appearing of our Lord. 

Jesus teaches us in the 22d chapter of Luke the 
immediate connection between following Him in 
His humiliations and temptations, and the receiv- 
ing of a place in His kingdom when He comes to 
reign on the earth. In the first chapter of Phil- 
ippians, Paul gives us one of his apostolic prayers 
that the believers "may have the love of God 



60 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



abounding in them more and more, that they might 
be sincere and without offense until the day of 
Christ." Here is a statement of the direct rela- 
tionship between the fullness of love and the 
preservation of the believer until the coming of 
Jesus. Again in the third chapter of Colossians 
the apostle tells us that we are to be dead to sin, 
and risen with Christ, and to seek those things 
which are heavenly, where Christ sitteth at the 
right hand of God, and that our affection is to be 
set on things divine, because our life is hid with 
Christ in God, and "that when Christ our life shall 
appear, then we shall appear with Him in glory." 
So here again the Holy Ghost has stated the su- 
preme connection between a state of present holi- 
ness of heart and life and the personal appearing 
of our Lord. 

Again in the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, 
Paul tells those believers that his hope and joy 
and crown of rejoicing, or as the Greek has it, his 
crown of glory, is in the perseverance of these 
saints until they meet in the presence of their Lord 
Jesus at His coming. In all these Scriptures there 
is no allusion to the death-bed, or the grave, as a 
terminal point of salvation, or stewardship, but 
everything focalizes "in the presence of Jesus." 
Again, in the same Epistle and third chapter, the 
apostle prays that the Lord would increase the 
love of the saints toward one another, to the end 
that God might establish their hearts without 
hlame in holiness before God at the coming of our 
Lord Jesus Christ with His saints. Again in the 



TILL I COME. 



61. 



fifth chapter he prays that the God of peace him- 
self would sanctify us entirely, and preserve our 
whole spirit, and soul, and body, without blame, 
unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thus 
the whole tenor of the New Testament is: "Hold 
fast till I come;" 1 "Occupy till I come;" "Render 
your stewardship when the Master returns;'' "Be 
filled with love, and preserved without blame until 
Christ comes/"' and these two great facts of per- 
sonal and full salvation and the second coming of 
Jesus are continually blended together. 

We learn from the tenor of all these Scriptures, 
and similar passages in the Old Testament, that the 
presence of Christ himself constitutes the center 
and substance of His kingdom. For the first two 
centuries of the Christian era the Scripture teach- 
ing of the premillennial coming of Jesus was uni- 
versally held among Christians. But when the 
Christian ministry began to lose the fullness of the 
Spirit, then their faith lost its strength and dis- 
cernment, and they settled down on the plane of 
earthly politics and human philosophy, and as the 
church got more formidable and worldly, the doc- 
trine began to be propagated that the Christian 
church was to conquer the nations of the w T orld, 
and thus bring the golden age of prophecy without 
the personal presence of Jesus on the earth. And 
although the Protestant churches have thrown off 
the forms and many of the grosser teachings of 
Romanism, yet a great many unscriptural doctrines 
have sifted through from Romanism, and settled 
down as a sediment in the teachings of Protestant- 



62 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



ism to a much greater extent than Protestants 
themselves are aware of. One of these Romanist 
notions is that of the church conquering the 
world. When we look into the current view^s of 
modern worldly literature, we find a universal ten- 
dency to ignore God as a personal creator and gov- 
ernor in His works. The commonality of men are 
perhaps profoundly ignorant of the extent to 
which they ignore the existence and personality of 
the God who made them. And this is true of all 
classes of society, from the most polite to the most 
vulgar. The modern newspapers, magazines, and 
works of science, philosophy, literature, art, and 
history, are turned out by the thousand, and if 
every human being should suddenly die, and some 
inhabitant of a distant world should come here and 
look into these various literary productions, he 
w T ould be astonished to find how utterly the God of 
the universe had been ignored in them all. Men 
speak of "nature'' and "natural law" in a thousand 
ways without ever seeming to appreciate the 
thought of a living and personal Creator. And if 
God is mentioned, He is simply the masculine form 
of the neuter noun of nature. Now are we aware 
that a parallel sin is being committed, and has been 
for centuries committed by numberless multitudes 
in the visible church with regard to the Kingdom 
of God on this earth? Professed believers have 
imbibed the notion that the Kingdom of God will 
come about by various achievements of civiliza- 
tion and science, and modern progress, and ec- 
clesiastical machinery, and that the kingdom con- 



TILL I COME. 



63 



sists merely in certain principles of reform, and 
religious doctrine, while the personality and visi- 
ble presence of Jesus as the center and embodi- 
ment of that kingdom seems seldom or never to 
enter the mind. Hence the church is looking for 
an impersonal kingdom of mere principles. But 
such a view of the coming of Christ's kingdom is 
utterly unscriptural, and nothing more or less than 
an anti-Christ, that is, the substituting of a church 
or a system of teachings for the personal presence 
of Jesus Himself. Just as the blazing sun com- 
prises in itself the daily light and warmth of the 
earth, and the fruitful seasons, and the brightness 
of day, all flow out directly from the sun, so the 
Kingdom of God on this earth, the subjugation of 
the nations, the lifting of the curse from man and 
animals and material nature, the rectifying of 
earth's wrongs, and the tilling of the world with 
the glory of God, all flow out from the person and 
presence of the Lord Jesus. 

As men drifted away from God all their views 
became more and more impersonal, and they talked 
of principles and laws and forces. Hence we find 
Christian Scientists, and Spiritualists, and Free- 
thinkers ignoring a real personal Christ, but run- 
ning off into a smoky haze of mystified thought in 
which they harp on "the Christ principle" and 
similar expressions of nonsense. But did we know 
that the church has committed this same blunder 
with regard to the kingdom of God on this earth, 
making it to consist of a universal spread of im- 
personal teachings and a conglomerate mass of 



64 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



churchism, instead of the presence of the personal 
King Himself , upon whose shoulder the government 
is laid, and out from whose person the empire 
flows? Hence- men have unwittingly put the 
church in the place of the Lord Jesus, and there is 
a continual harping on "working for the church," 
"being sent out by the church," "being loyal to 
the church," "raising money for the church," 
"guarding the interests of the church," being "con- 
secrated to the church," and "'making great sacri- 
fices for the church," and all the while our adorable 
Jesus, Redeemer, Savior, Sanctifier, Healer, and 
coming King, is grieved to His heart to see how the 
nomina] church has usurped His place in the hearts 
of men, and has assumed His throne and attempted 
to play the King in His stead. If in all of the fore- 
going expressions the word "Jesus" were used in- 
stead of the word "church," it would be according 
to Scripture. This putting the word "church" 
where the word "Christ" ought to be put is anti- 
Christ, for anti-Christ does not consist in a particu- 
lar person, but in a vast multiplied system of the 
usurpation of the place of Jesus, and while anti- 
Christ may head up in some particular office as 
that of the Pope, yet it is spread out as a ubiqui- 
tous thing throughout fallen Christianity. 

W e read in Ezekiel that when God rebuked the 
kings of Judah for their idolatry, and prophesied 
their downfall, He' says, "Remove the diadem and 
take off the crown and be abased, for I will over- 
turn, overturn, overturn it, and it shall be no more 
until He comes whose right it is, and I will give it 



POWER OVER THE NATIONS. 



65 



to Him."* (Ezk. 21.) Here is a prophecy of the 
coming of the Son of God to govern this world, and 
the prophet does not say that "it" shall come, that 
is, an impersonal system of church government, 
hut, emphatically till "He" shall come, the personal 
king. 

It is in view of all these truths that the perfect 
believer is to set his heart on seeing Jesus, and 
loving His personal appearing. St. Paul gives us 
to understand that our love is not up to the New 
Testament standard until we have a perfect desire 
for the coming of Jesus, and that our whole heart 
loves His appearing. 



CHAPTER IX. 

"POWER OVER THE NATIONS." 
Rev. 2:26. 

AFTER telling us to "hold fast till I come," 
Jesus proceeds to give a special promise to 
the saints, in connection with His coming and per- 
sonal reign on earth, by saying, "He that over- 
cometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to 
him will I give power over the nations, and he 
shall rule them with a rod of iron. As the vessels 
of the potter shall they be broken to shivers, even 
as I received of my Father." Here is a most em- 
phatic promise, of the rank and authority which 

those saints will have in Christ's millennial king- 

5 



66 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



dom, who by their overcoming faith, shall be 
counted worthy of a place in His bridehood. This 
promise of the gift of power, has more than one 
fulfillment. Like other Scriptures, it must not be 
limited to only one application. It has a fulfillment 
in the spiritual life, during the present age, and 
will have its complete fulfillment in the coming age. 
In the present life, when a believer by faith over- 
comes all the works of Satan in his heart, he re- 
ceives by the incoming of the Holy Spirit, a gift of 
power in the moral world over those who are 
around him. And although this enduement of 
power does not bring all the persons with whom 
he associates into subjection to Jesus, yet, notwith- 
standing, they feel the force of a holy heart and 
life, and as an individual unit he possesses his 
quota of power over the world. Many suppose 
that this is the only fulfillment which these 
promises have, but that is greatly to belittle the 
word of God. Those who do not believe in the pre- 
millennial coming of Jesus suppose from this 
Scripture that the nations of the world in their 
present state are to be subdued by the spiritual 
power in the hearts of what few believers there are 
who have a baptism of the Holy Ghost. But the 
Scriptures nowhere warrant this view. There is 
not a single text in the entire Bible which teaches 
that the nations are to be converted and saved in 
the present age or under the present order of 
things. The apostle tells us in the Acts that God 
is now "calling out a people for His name from 
among the Gentiles,'- and St. James tells us that 



POWER OVER THE NATIONS. 



67 



the believers in the present age, "are a kind of 
first fruits," and we are told that the world, the 
ungodly portion of mankind, live in the hands of 
the wicked one, and that the wheat and the tares 
will grow together until the end of this age. The 
teaching of the word of God is that Christ is not 
only saving as many in the present age as He can, 
but that of these saved ones there is a special com- 
pany who give themselves up entirely to God, and 
serve Him without any reservation, and who have 
in them the martyr spirit and the full baptism of 
the Holy Ghost, and these are technically called in 
Scripture "the elect," "the overcomers," "the 
bride of the Lamb, " 4 4 the church of the first born, " or 
"the hundred and forty-four thousand," "those 
who are called and chosen and faithful," and these 
are the ones who are to be raised in the first resur- 
rection, or caught away at the appearing of Christ 
in the clouds of Heaven, and glorified with Him, 
and sit with him at the marriage supper of the 
Lamb, and then return with Him to this earth after 
the great tribulations, and sit with Him in His 
millennial kingdom, and be appointed as prophets, 
and priests, and princes, over all the earth to 
subdue the nations and bring them into a state of 
holiness, and, with Christ, rule over them a thou- 
sand years. There are scores of Scripture passages 
which can not possibly have any rational and satis- 
factory explanation except in harmony with this 
statement. This promise of Jesus we are now con- 
sidering has no meaning except thus interpreted. 
We know most assuredly that these words where 



68 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



the overcomers are to have power over the nations 
and rule them with a rod of iron, have never yet 
been fulfilled. The ungodly have governed this 
world from the fall of Adam, except for a few brief 
years after the flood, when Noah and his family had 
charge of the depopulated earth. And we also 
know that this Scripture can not be applied to the 
Kingdom of God in the third heaven, where the 
throne of the eternal Father is located, because 
there are no sinful nations there to be conquered. 
Neither can it apply to the history of mankind be- 
yond the general judgment, for then all the saints 
and sinners are forever separated. Hence we see- 
that the only period in the ages where this promise 
can ever be fulfilled is during the millennial reign 
of Christ on earth. 

Some have supposed that at the second coming 
of Jesus all the unsaved nations are to be de- 
stroyed and burnt up, but if that were the case 
how could God's saints ''rule over the nations and 
break down their power like the potter's vessel?'' 
There is no Scripture that teaches that the nations 
of the earth are to be destroyed or killed at the 
appearing of Jesus. On the other hand, it is 
abundantly taught that they will remain here and 
pass through the terrific scourgings under the ad- 
ministration of the Ancient of Days. 

In the parable of the ten virgins, those who have 
the oil, that is the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, will 
be taken away into the wedding banquet, and those 
who have lost their grace, or have not the oil, are 
left behind, but not destroyed. 



POWER OVER THE NATIONS. 



69 



Again Jesus presents three scenes in connection 
with His coming in the clouds. A night scene, two 
shall be in bed together, the" one taken, the other 
left, A morning scene, two shall be grinding corn 
to prepare the morning meal, the one taken, the 
other left. A midday scene, two shall be in the 
field working together, the one taken, the other 
left. All these Scriptures prove that when the 
elect are taken up from the earth with Jesus in the 
clouds of heaven the people of the earth will be 
left, to live on and pass through the tribulations 
and propagate the human race, and when Jesus 
and His bride return from the wedding they will 
find the nations still living on the earth. Of course 
those who are taken away* will be glorified like 
unto Christ, and Jesus says, they neither marry nor 
are given in marriage, but will be equal to the 
angels, and they are the ones who are to be His 
officers and sub-rulers in His millennial kingdom. 

This is the exact teaching in the eighth Psalm 
that, when Christ reigns in all the earth, those per- 
sons who were perfectly humble, like little babes, 
shall be ordained with strength, and have power to 
still the enemy and the avenger. And further on 
in the Psalm that these saints were made for a 
short while lower than the angels, but will be 
glorified and crowned with glory, and honor, and 
have dominion over the works of God's hands, 
over all sheep, and oxen, and fowls of the air, and 
fish of the sea. That prophecy refers emphatically 
to Christ's millennial kingdom and the reign of His 
saints over the earth. The parallel of that Psalm 



70 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



is found in the second chapter of Hebrews. The 
apostle had stated in the previous chapter the doc- 
trine of the ministry of angels during the present 
age over the heirs of salvation, but he says that 
the angels will not have charge over the habitable 
earth which is to come, that is in the coming age, 
but that these humble and holy men, who were 
made for a little while lower than the angels, and 
who have been sanctified and made one with Jesus, 
are to be crowned with glory and rulership in the 
coming age. 

Compare Heb. 1:14 with second chapter, verses 5 
and 11. In the forty-fifth Psalm we have a mar- 
velous portrait of Jesus as a king, and of the elect 
saints as His queen, standing at His right hand, 
dressed in the gold of Ophir, and in the close of 
the Psalm we are told that the members of this 
queenhood are to be '-sent forth as princes in all 
the earth. " That Scripture has never yet been ful- 
filled, except in a very limited sense, of those 
apostles and evangelists who have gone through 
the earth saving souls, but they have never been 
princes over all the earth, even in that sense, but 
only over a few penitent and believing souls in a 
moral way. 

We have a similar prophecy in Psalm 46, giving 
a description of the desolation which God will make 
in the earth during the great tribulations, and 
then He will make the wars to cease unto the 
end of the earth, and break the bow, and cut 
the spear in sunder, and burn the chariot with 
fire, and make the nations to be still, and to know 



POWER OVER THE NATIONS. 



71 



that He is God, and that He will be exalted among 
the heathen in the earth. That Scripture has never 
yet been fulfilled, and the only time it can possibly 
be accomplished will be when Christ and His glori- 
fied saints take charge of the world. In Psalm 47 
we have another inspired picture of the Lord 
Jesus as being king over the earth, and the psalm- 
ist says: "He shall subdue the people under us,, 
and the nations under our feet." That Scripture 
has never yet been fulfilled; on the other hand, the 
people have kept the saints of God under, and the 
nations have put their feet upon God's holy ones. 
But the day is coming, and that speedily, when 
these words of the psalmist will be literally and 
abundantly fulfilled. 

In the thirty-second chapter of Isaiah we are told 
that "a king shall reign in righteousness, and 
princes shall rule in judgment, and a man, that is a 
glorified man, shall be as a hiding place from the 
wind, and a covert from the tempest," which cor- 
responds with the teaching of Paul in the second 
of Hebrews that the glorified saints are to be the 
custodians, and guardians, and protectors of the 
people who will be born in the millennial age, just 
as angels are now our guardians and protectors. 
And to show that this prophecy in Isaiah refers 
directly to Christ's millennial kingdom it is in con- 
nection with the prophecy in the previous chapter, 
and "that day when men will cast away their idols 
of silver, and idols of gold, and when the Lord shall 
lift His ensign in the earth, and put his fire in Zion, 
and His furnace in Jerusalem. " We read in the sev- 



72 



STEPS TO THE THROVE. 



enth chapter of Daniel ''that the saints cf the most 
high shall take the kingdom, and possess the king- 
dom forever, even forever and ever." And to 
prove that this refers to Christ's coming reign, he 
says in the same chapter that the kingdom shall be 
under the whole heaven, and shall be given to the 
people of the saints of the most high, whose kingdom 
is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall 
serve and obey Him. This prophecy has certainly 
never yet been accomplished, and we notice that 
the reign of the saints of the most high is put in 
this prophecy, as also in that of Isaiah, right in 
connection with the reign of Christ Himself, that 
is, the glorified saints are to share the kingdom 
with Christ, and to be rulers under Him. 

The word "horn" in Scripture always signifies 
4 'government, ".dominion, and Daniel says in the 
same chapter: "I beheld, and the horn of the 
beast made war with the saints, and prevailed 
against them." We know this Scripture has been 
fulfilled for many centuries, and especially when 
the beast of Romanism prevailed against the saints 
in the dark ages, and this prevailing of the beastly 
horn against the saints still goes on, and Daniel 
says will go on until the Ancient of Days come and 
judgment is given to the saints of the Most High, 
and the time comes that the saints possess the 
kingdom. That prophecy of Daniel corresponds 
exactly with this promise in the second of Reve- 
lation, that Christ will give power to His overcom- 
ing saints over all the nations of the earth to rule 
them with a rod of iron. 



POWER OVER THE NATIONS. 



73 



We read in Malachi that when the Lord shall 
come as a blazing sun of righteousness, with heal- 
ing in His wings, then those who love and fear 
Him shall go forth as calves of the stall, and shall 
tread down the wicked like ashes under the soles of 
their feet. In order to get a more correct under- 
standing as to who these are that shall go forth as 
calves of the stall to tread down the wicked, they 
are described in the previous chapter where it says : 
"They that feared the Lord spake often one to 
another, and the Lord hearkened and heard, and a 
book of remembrance was written before Him," 
"and they shall be mine, saith the Lord of Hosts, in 
that day when I make up my jewels/' The w T ord 
4 'jewels'' in our common version is in the original 
"my special treasures,'' distinctly indicating the 
class of believers entirely devoted to God. These 
are the saints that shall bo gathered out in the day 
of the Lord, and the prophet goes on to say that 
these saints shall return, that is, come back with 
Jesus from the wedding supper, and discern be- 
tween the righteous and the wicked, that is, they 
will be judges, with the gift of discerning the 
spirits and superintending and controlling the 
nations that are still living on the earth. Jesus 
says in Matthew, 24th chapter, "that those faith- 
ful servants who shall be found feeding the house- 
hold of Christ w^ith the meat of a pure gospel at 
the time of His second coming shall be blessed; 
and Christ declares He will make such servants 
rulers over all His goods. Jesus means exactly 
what He says, that such servants shall be His 
princes over the earth during His reign. 



74 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



Also in the 22d chapter of Luke, Jesus affirms 
that those disciples who have continued with Him 
in His temptations, not those who began and fell out 
by the way, and not those who continue with Him 
in luxury and ease, with light work and large sala- 
ries, but those who persistently cling to Him through 
trouble, and sorrow, and loneliness, and tempta- 
tion, and come off as overcomers, He says to such, 
I will appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father has 
appointed unto me, that you may eat and drink at 
my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judg- 
ing the twelve tribes of Israel. 

What horrible work a great many church teach- 
ers make of this Scripture, in trying to twist it 
into a Swedenborgian mystical meaning. The in- 
finite Christ does not trifle with His people, and 
means exactly what He says, and just as infallibly 
as God the Father hath appointed a kingdom to 
His Son, so as infallibly, Jesus will appoint His 
victorious followers, who serve Him with perfect 
loyalty, a kingdom, and give them thrones, and 
principalities, over the nations of the earth. Here 
is a definite prophecy that the twelve tribes of 
Israel will, during that kingdom, be restored, and 
put under the jurisdiction of glorified apostles. 

The same truth is set forth in the 5th chapter of 
Revelation, where the 4 'four living creatures,"' who 
represent glorified saints, sing a new song unto 
Him who was slain, and hath redeemed them by 
His blood, and hath made them kings and priests, 
and concludes by saying, "and they shall reign on 
the earth." This is an emphatic statement, that 



POWER OVER THE NATIONS. 



75 



the kingdom referred to is not in some distant 
world, but on this very earth where they had been 
redeemed. Another proof text is found in Revela- 
tion twelve, where the man-child, which does not 
represent as some suppose the Lord Jesus, but 
which signifies the indefatigable martyrs slain by 
the red dragon of the Roman inquisition, and these 
martyrs, it is said, shall rule the nations with a rod 
of iron; that is, they will form a part of the bride- 
hood of the Lamb, and come back with Him to 
govern the w T orld. Another proof text is found c in 
Revelation twenty, concerning those who are 
counted worthy of a place in the first resurrection, 
where it is said, 4 'blessed and sanctified are they 
that have part in the first resurrection, for they 
shall be priests of God, and of Christ, and shall 
reign with Him a thousand years." 

These Scriptures are all clear, specific, and 
unanimous, and there are scores of other passages 
that could be cited to prove the same truth. The 
significance of the expression, "to rule the nations 
with a rod of iron, " will be considered in a future 
chapter, when we come to the setting uptof the 
theocratic throne of our Savior in Jerusalem. 



76 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



CHAPTER X. 



THE MORNING STAR. 



Rev. 2:28. 



NOTHER step in the qualifications for reign- 



that of having "the morning star.'' All the meta- 
phors of the Bible are used with infallible precis- 
iqn, and we can learn the mind of God by studying 
them. When Jesus is compared to a blazing sun, 
it always refers to His visible, personal appear- 
ance, the open manifestation of His Majesty, either 
in heaven to angels and glorified saints, or else to 
His incarnate history while on the earth, or else to 
His "parousia;" that is. His personal appearing in 
the clouds of heaven. But when Jesus is compared 
to a "star," it refers to the interior and spiritual 
manifestation of Himself by the Holy Spirit in the 
mind of a perfect believer. It will greatly aid us 
in understanding many prophecies of Scripture, 
and also in our experiences, to keep these meta- 
phors clear in our thought. 

Jesus as a "star" enters into our hearts, and un- 
veils Himself to us privately and personally. 
Jesus as a "sun" comes to us outwardly and vis- 
ibly, manifesting Himself to the world-at-large, the 
collective mass of His children. Hence when Jesus, 
as the divine Bridegroom, conies to collect the 
great body of His saints to Himself, He will come 
as a blazing Sun, eclipsing all other creatures in 




coming kingdom, is 



THE MORNING STAR. 



77 



heaven and earth, and filling the spaces of the sky 
with His dazzling brightness. But before that 
glorious event, He reveals Himself to the eye of 
pure faith, as the individual Bridegroom of the 
heart, as a sweet, brilliant morning star, coming 
to us in the night of our present life, and by the 
Holy Spirit, unveiling Himself in a private, per- 
sonal, and transcendent manner, as the one alto- 
gether lovely. 

There is a logical connection in the promise be- 
tween the gift of power and the gift of the morn- 
ing star. The gift of power over the nations has 
a preliminary and spiritual fulfillment in the bap- 
tism of the Holy Ghost on the perfect believer, and 
it is by this baptism of the Spirit that Christ is re- 
vealed in the heart, in the glory of His divine and 
personal character. In the 14th chapter of John, 
where Christ promises to give the abiding Com- 
forter, He adds to the promise, "In that day ye 
shall know that I am in the Father, and the Father 
in me,*' that is, that under the illumination of the 
indwelling Comforter there will be revealed to our 
inner consciousness the perfect divinity of our 
Lord Jesus, and of His unity with the Father. 
Hence in this promise, which we are now consider- 
ing in this second chapter of Revelation, after 
promising to the overcoming saint power over the 
nations, He adds the other promise of giving to the 
overcomer the morning star. 

In tracing out some further thoughts on this sub- 
ject let us notice: 

1. That the morning star is revealed in the 



78 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



night. Hence it refers to Christ being manifest 
during what has been appropriately called "the 
night of faith." It is in accord with this Scripture 
that the personal visible presence of Christ in the 
world is always denominated "the day." while His 
absence from the earth is called night. "When 
Jesus was on the earth He said: "Yet a little 
while is the light with you. While 3^e have the 
light walk in it, lest darkness come upon you.'' 
Again He said, "I am the light of the world." The 
apostle says, "The night is far spent, the day is at 
hand," meaning by ' 'night" the absence of Jesus 
from the earth, and meaning by ''the day is at 
hand" the near approach of our Lord's personal 
coming. Again He says. "Exhort one another 
daily, and so much the more as ye see the day ap- 
proaching," meaning by the approaching day the 
return of Christ to fill this world with His glory 
and kingdom. The psalmist tells us that "the up- 
right shall have dominion over the wicked in the 
morning," meaning by the word "morning" the 
beginning of Christ's reign on this earth. The 
words can have no other significance, for it cannot 
apply to the third heavens, as there are no wicked 
people there. It can not refer to hell, for there are 
no upright persons there, and it can not refer to 
the present order of things, for wicked men now 
rule this world, and there can be no period for the 
fulfillment of this prophecy, except in that bright 
morning of the millennial age. when Jesus and His 
saints shall possess the kingdom. Persons who 
speak in a lofty strain of the light of Christian 



THE MORNING STAR. 



79 



civilization as being the noonday of Bible truth, 
while the world everywhere is mantled in spiritual 
darkness, and the muddy waters of worldiness are 
inundating the visible churches, and while sinners 
are multiplying ten times faster than the saints are, 
can have no real conception of what God means by 
the word ''day." They speak after the manner of 
men, and mistake the twilight of civilization for 
the glorious day of spiritual light. 

While a small number of holy saints are being in- 
ternally illuminated by the morning star revealed 
in their hearts, the world at large, even the most 
cultured of those who have not the baptism of the 
Spirit, are walking at best in the pale moonlight 
reflected from true believers, but still they are 
plodding along in the night, dreaming it is meridian 
day. When God uses the word day, He measures it 
by His own thought of what day is, and not by the 
groping conceptions of carnal minds. Hence the 
Word of God speaks over and over again of "the 
day of Christ," and "the day of God," and of "that 
day," as if all the light that men now have was 
midnight in comparison. 

2. The morning star will bear some comparison 
with the other stars in the sky, though it outshines 
them all. But when the sun rises, there is no com- 
parison between it and the other luminaries in the 
heavens, for all other celestial and terrestrial lights 
are pale behind its splendor. In like manner, dur- 
ing the night of faith, Jesus is revealed to the pure 
in heart, in His spotless humanity, as the brightest 
and most attractive of all beings in the universe. 



80 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



Even if we consider His blessed humanity apart 
from the divinity of the Eternal Word, still there is 
a beauty and lustre in that human nature surpass- 
ing ail the starry hosts of angels and saints, for 
the Holy Spirit not only reveals His absolute di- 
vinity, but also the incomparable beauty and love- 
liness of His humanity. Every saint of God is 
a real form of heavenly beauty, which far surpasses 
the most beautiful objects in material creation, and 
when we turn our thoughts upon that bright land 
of angelic and glorified spirits, could we see them 
in all their multiplied variety and their individual 
graces and charms, it would doubtless dazzle our 
understanding; but were wo able to survey all 
those myriads of legions and comprehend their 
graces and beauties in one collective mass of glory, 
the whole scene of exquisite loveliness, multiplied 
millions of times, would not equal the ineffable 
beauty and glory of the crucified and glorified hu- 
manity of Jesus. It has pleased the Father that in 
that humanity all the fullness of God should abide. 

This inward revelation of Jesus as the morning 
star is referred to by St. Peter in his second epis- 
tle, where he refers particularly to the second com- 
ing of Christ as typified by the transfiguration, and 
says that when he was with Christ in the Holy 
Mount he there ''saw the power and coming of our 
Lord Jesus Christ,*' and then goes on to say that 
"we are to take heed to that word of prophecy, 
which is like a lamp shining in a dark place, until 
the day shall dawn and the Day Star arises in our 
hearts.*' The "day dawn'' is the work of regenera- 



THE MORNING STAR. 



81 



tion, and the ''Day S^ar arising in our hearts" is the 
work of the sanctifying Spirit cleansing away our 
natural darkness and revealing Jesus as a perfect 
Savior within us. 

St. Paul, in the first chapter of Galatians, men- 
tions three epochs in his life. First, his natural 
birth; second, his conversion; and third, the sanc- 
tifying baptism of the Spirit revealing Christ in 
his heart. He says: "It pleased God, who sepa- 
rated me from my mother's womb, and called me 
by His grace, to reveal His Son in me." In this 
sentence the verbs "separate," and "call," and 
"reveal" are all in the aorist tense, which always 
indicates in the Greek language instantaneous 
events. Thus the revelation of Christ in the 
heart of St. Paul is what Peter means by the 
day star arising in our hearts, and the same 
thing that Jesus means by saying, "I will give 
him the morning star." Hence Christ, as the 
Day Star, is a peaceful, sweetly pining vision of 
faith, for the fullness of His glory. It is a love 
for Himself personally, a heart embracement of 
His adorable person, a being mentally charmed 
with the exquisite grace of His character, a gentle 
sinking down of our will along all lines into His 
will, a divine intuition of His lamblike and dove- 
like nature, a quick and loving surrender day by 
day of all our judgments, and prejudices, and 
labors, and sufferings, and circumsta.nces to the in- 
ward sway of His gentle nature, and a glad placing 
of our souls and bodies, with every affection, hope, 
and want, under the gentle pressure of His loving 



82 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



foot, and a secret grief at seeing Him so little ap- 
preciated, and so unloved by His own creatures. It 
is a sweet longing to see Him reigning as absolute 
monarch over everybody and everything. It is an 
earnest love for His appearing, and a desire to 
nestle close up to Him when He comes in glory. 
It is an inexpressible Holy Ghost passion for the 
man Christ Jesus, the incarnate one of God. 

When Jesus is spoken of as coming in the clouds 
of heaven, He is then compared to a blazing Sun. 
Malachi prophecies of that event by saying: "Unto 
you that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteous- 
ness arise, with healing in his wings, and ye shall 
tread down the wicked as ashes under your feet." 
And John declares that "Jesus will come in the 
clouds of heaven, and every eye shall see Him, and 
all kindreds shall wail because of Him." Now we 
must remember that no one will be prepared to 
meet Jesus as a blazing Sun coming in the clouds 
of heaven unless he has previously been purified 
by His precious blood and had Christ revealed 
within him as the Morning Star. Thus as the 
morning star, on the brow of the approaching day, 
indicates the rising of the sun, so the revelation of 
Jesus, as a perfect personal Savior within the 
heart, gives us prophetic intimations of His com- 
ing as a glorious king, and prepares us for that 
transcendent event. Through all the Christian 
generations, when believers have reached the de- 
gree of grace which admits them into the number 
of the bridehood of the Lamb, they have had this 
gift of the Morning Star, this fascination for the 



THE MORNING STAR. 



83 



face of Jesus, which is the Holy Ghost photograph 
of the divine Bridegroom, which He sends on 
ahead of His appearing, and hangs it up in the 
hearts of those who are to sit with Him at the 
marriage supper, and share His royal prerogatives 
in His coming empire. 

In reading the biography of holy persons we are 
struck with the fact that when they have reached 
a certain degree in grace they have had this in- 
ward spiritual vision of Jesus and wonderful pre- 
monitions of His second coming. As a sample of 
what thousands of saints have felt in days past, I 
will quote a beautiful instance from the writings 
of the saintly Faber: "Before the dawn of day a 
huge rolling mass of unwieldly cloud came up from 
the western horizon. With incredible swiftness, 
and the loud roaring of sudden wind, it covered 
like a pall the brilliant moonlit heavens and 
deluged the earth with slanting columns of whirl- 
ing rain. It passed on. A star came out, and then 
another, and at last the moon, and then the storm 
drove onward to the east, towards the sea; and all 
at once a lunar rainbow spanned the black arch of 
heaven, and it seemed as if Jesus should have come 
beneath that bow and through that purple cloud 
that was barring the gates of the sunrise. And 
what is all this but a figure of our lives, of which 
we might make so much?" 

There is a class of religionists who make a spe- 
cialty of the second advent, but whose teachings 
are largely materialistic, denying the immor- 
tality of the soul and the divine personality and 



84 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit and other 
Scriptural truths. If Christ should appear, such 
persons would be utterly unprepared to meet Him. 
Unless we have within us the Morning Star we are 
in do condition to meet the blazing Sun. The 
Scriptures nowhere teach that the moment of 
Christ's appearing will be a moment for the puri- 
fying of our nature, or for the filling of us with the 
Spirit, but it will be a moment for catching away 
those who are already made pure in heart and filled 
with the oil, and who have in them Christ abiding 
as the Morning Star. 

This is definitely referred to in the language of 
the elect woman, in the Song of Solomon, where 
she says, "My beloved is mine and I am His. He 
feedeth among the lilies until the day break and 
the shadows flee away. Turn, my beloved, and be 
thou like a roe or a young hart upon the Mountains 
of Bether," or, as it should be rendered, <k Upon the 
Mountains of Separation.'' In this passage there 
is indicated a blessed, deep union between Christ 
and His elect, and the invisible Jesus is represented 
as coming down in the Spirit, in the humble val- 
leys of earth, and feeding Himself upon the love of 
His own saints, who are compared to lilies, and 
this communion will go on until the daybreak of 
His second coming and the shadows of this present 
age have flown away before that rising Sun. And 
the loving believer is pleading for the Bridegroom 
to hasten His coming over the mountains that sepa- 
rate between this wicked age and the golden age 
of His millennial reign. 



THE MORNING STAR. 



85 



There are doubtless many prophetic events and 
acts in the life of our Savior when on this 
earth, which we have never jet discovered 
or appreciated. The smallest things in the in- 
carnation and life of Jesus have a trancendent 
and far-reaching meaning which surpasses all 
our thought. Among them w T e may notice that 
for several months the Eternal Son of God en- 
shrouded Himself with His earthly mother before 
coming forth in visible manifestation to reveal the 
Father to the human race, and to make an atone- 
ment for the sins of men. During those mysterious 
months of the incarnate Word of God no one can 
tell the thoughts and feelings of the humble Mary, 
how her thoughts turned almost every moment to 
her incarnate Lord, and how she lovingly and wist- 
fully pined for the hour to come when she might 
look upon that most lovely face in all the creation 
of God, that face which should show" forth more of 
the glory of the three persons of the Godhead 
than all the faces of angels or men combined, and 
how she yearned to kiss those lips that should 
speak the doom of all mankind. Even as an un- 
born Infant, He had power to sanctify John the 
Baptist, and to fill him with the Holy Ghost before 
his birth, and to fill his mother, Elizabeth, with the 
Holy Spirit. (Luke, 1st chapter, 39,45). Is not all 
this a divine parable of what is now taking place? 
Christ is to be now formed within our hearts, the 
hope of glory, to live within us in His personal, 
forgiving, cleansing, and comforting presence, 
just as really as His humanity lived in His earthly 



86 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



mother, and, like Mary, the more we comprehend 
this blessed indwelling of Christ in our hearts, the 
more we are filled with premonitory leapings of 
soul in anticipation of the hour, when we, too, 
shall see that face that she longed to see. As the 
hour of His coming draws near, His true, anointed 
ones in all the earth will feel more intensely growing 
within them this prophetic feeling of seeing Him 
in glory. 



CHAPTER XI. 

' 'WHITE RAIMENT." 
Rev. 3:5. 

AS we come to consider the next step which is 
set forth in the promise of the fifth over- 
cometh, we find the manifestation of the Christ-life 
taking on a still further development in that of a 
perfect testimony. "He that overcometh the same 
shall be clothed in white raiment, and I will not 
blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will 
confess his name before my Father, and before His 
angels." These words cover the entire range of 
Christian testimony, and also the counterpart of 
our testimony on earth, which is Christ's testimony 
for us in heaven. This promise of being clothed 
in white raiment expresses the full confession both 
by lip and outward life of the work of grace in the 
heart. The white stone is pre-eminently expressive 
of a pure heart, the hidden work of God within 



WHITE RAIMENT. 



87 



the ,soul, but the white raiment is expressive of 
outward manifestations of that inward whiteness 
in the words, manners, and all the features of out- 
ward life. We may gather from this promise the 
following points: 

1. God has so constructed all living things that 
they will tell on themselves. What is in the heart 
of any creature will inevitably come to the surface 
and make itself known. Life in itself is always 
hidden, and can never be discerned by the micro- 
scope. But life of every kind has in it a quality of 
revelation so that everything will sooner or later 
bear outward testimony of its inward nature. And 
this outward expression of the inward life takes on 
the form of a garment. The inward life of a fish 
will manifest itself in outward fins and scales, and 
makes up the garniture of its peculiar organic life. 
The hidden life in the blood of a bird will confess 
itself in the plumage of the bird, and this outward 
plumage in color and texture is an infallible con- 
fession of the species of life within. The secret 
life of a tree, which lies in its sap, could not be dis- 
tinguished under a microscope as to its genus or 
species, but let that sap come forth in bud, and 
bloom, and foliage, and at once the secret of its 
inner nature is made known. Man might take a 
swine and shave him clean, and cover him with 
white wool, but just as long as the swine blood 
lives in its heart it will grow bristles. 

This great fact of creation is manifested every- 
where, that "the blood will tell" — the inward life 
will clothe itself outwardly in an exact and corre- 



88 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



sponcling raiment. This is as infallibly true of the 
soul as of any other form of life. It is eternally 
impossible for the secret life of the immortal soul 
to remain long concealed, and the outflow of that 
life, in words, and tempers, and tones, and ges- 
tures, and business transactions, will sooner or 
later be an exact manifestation of the secret foun- 
tains of the hidden life. It is God Himself who has 
established these unchanging laws, and they are 
but the outworking of His absolute equity and jus- 
tice and love. Hence He says that the overcoming 
believer, who has the white stone of a pure heart 
and the Morning Star of an indwelling Christ, will 
have the outward clothing of a humble, pure, gen- 
tle, discreet, bold, and heavenly life, which is the 
■spotless garniture growing out from interior white- 
ness, with as absolute precision as a lamb's heart 
with its lamb's blood will clothe itself with lamb's 
wool. This white raiment will take on more in- 
tense forms of brightness, and sweetness, and out- 
ward glow in life, according to the intensity of the 
pure love in the heart. We are told that "God 
covers Himself with light as with a garment." 
From w T hich we learn that the manifestation of the 
Godhead to glorified spirits is that of the infinite 
ocean of inexpressible fire, a flame of light so ex- 
cessively bright that Paul says no man can ap- 
proach unto it — that is, no man in this mortal 
state could endure the sight. It would seem that 
God wants to raise us into fellowship with Him- 
self, and so fill us that w r e also shall be clothed in 
a white fire. 



WHITE RAIMENT. 



89 



We read of the living creatures in Ezekiel that 
they were like lightning, and that fire flashed out 
from them. We read of angels appearing to 
prophets as young men, clothed in white raiment 
of dazzling brightness. We also read of Jesus on 
the Mount of Transfiguration, letting the inward 
glory shine out through His raiment, making it of 
dazzling whiteness, and also of Christ being re- 
vealed to His prophets as clothed in white raiment, 
with His eyes like lightning, His face like the sun, 
and His feet like glowing brass in a furnace. The 
glorified saints are to be made like unto their Lord, 
so that in the future age they will be as radiant liv- 
ing flames 

If all this be true, then even in this life there 
must be a beginning of all these things, and so it 
comes to pass that the perfect believer can be filled 
with the .ove of God, like a glowing furnace, and 
have his inner spirit clothed with the Holy Ghost 
like a shining mantle. Hence there are times when 
under this spiritual investure of white fire the face 
will shine, the eye will flash, the voice have a mel- 
low, penetrating sweetness, and the manners melt 
into such lowliness and grace as to almost make 
the white robe of the inward soul visible to the eye, 

2. "I will not blot out his name out of the book 
of life*' 5 This indicates clearly that it is possible, 
at least up to a certain point in Christian progress, 
for a believer to apostatize and have his name 
stricken from the book of life. Why should God 
use words that have no meaning, and if it were im- 
possible for real believers to have their names 



90 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



blotted out, why should God say so? No human 
theology in this world expresses the whole of any 
Bible truth. The doctrines of Calvinism and Ar- 
minianism equally fail to express the whole truth. 
While the Scriptures teach most positively what is 
commonly called the final perseverance of the 
saints, it at the same time teaches just as positively 
that real, genuine believers whose names were in 
the book of life have apostatized and gone into 
outer darkness. It is not for us to formulate God's 
infinite Bible into an inflexible creed. In the thirty- 
third chapter of Ezekiel, God emphatically de- 
clares that the righteous man who is really right- 
eous may turn away from his righteousness and 
commit iniquity, and die in that state, and that then 
all his righteousness shall not be mentioned. And 
that a wicked man may turn away from his wicked- 
ness and become righteous, and if he lives in that 
state his sins shall never be mentioned unto him. 
And the Apostle Peter tells us it were better for a 
man not to have known the way of righteousness 
than, after he has known it, to turn from the holy 
commandment, or as it should be rendered, to turn 
from the commandment to be holy. 

So there is a point in grace from which man may 
apostatize, and then we are taught in the verse 
now under consideration that there is a point in 
grace which fixes the destiny of the soul eternally 
for glory. And Christ affirms that when the be- 
liever reaches that poinb in spiritual progress, in- 
dicated in this fifth overcometh, that his name will 
never be blotted out from the book of life. 



WHITE RAIMENT. 



91 



3. Jesus says: "I will confess his name before 
my Father and before His angels." So there are 
two testimonies transpiring — one on earth, a testi- 
mony for Jesus, and one in heaven, a testimony for 
the believer. As the believer by the outward ex- 
pression in his words and manners, and prayers 
and definite confessions of saving grace makes 
known to mankind the indwelling of Christ in his 
heart, so Jesus, at the right hand of God the 
Father, is making known in the heavenly world, 
the fidelity and labor and true character of the be- 
liever on earth. This shows us the intimate rela- 
tionship between the kingdom of God in grace and 
the King in glory. The perfect believer has Christ 
in him here in Spirit, and Christ carries that be- 
liever in His heart and in His mind at the right 
hand of the Father. The sympathies and inter- 
blendings of these two worlds are more blessed and 
perfect than many persons apprehend. The veil 
is very thin that separates between the Spirit-led 
child of God here and the radiant land of angels 
in heaven. 

Spiritualism is Satan's counterfeit of these blessed 
and intimate relationships; and because of Satan's 
counterfeit, many timid and partially, or very 
weakly, illumined Christians, dare not grasp with 
their faith all the fullness of Bible statements on 
this subject. But Paul positively affirms in He- 
brews, that the soul which has found its Pentecost 
in the Holy Spirit, has already come, even before 
the death of the body, into fellowship with the 
heavenly Jerusalem, and with an innumerable com- 



92 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



pany of angels, and with the church of the first 
born, and with the judge of all men, and with the 
spirits of just men made perfect. If believers could 
see these things in true light, and apprehend Christ 
confessing them before the Father, how they would 
throw aside all their timidity, and backwardness, 
and half-cowardice, in confessing the cleansing 
blood, and come out in a life of great liberty and 
fullness in the Hol}^ Ghost. 

This verse has a parallel in the third chapter of 
Malachi, where we are told that, then those who 
feared the Lord spake often one to another; that 
is, confessed Christ fully and in sincerity, that the 
Lord hearkened, and heard their confessions, and 
a book of remembrance was written before Him, and 
the inference is plain, that in this book of remem- 
brance, the confessions and obedience of His faithful 
children were recorded therein. The Bible tells of 
two books kept in heaven — one is the 5 'book of life, " 
and the other 6 'the book of remembrance." The 
book of life simply contains the registry of the 
names of those who are saved, without reference 
to their degree and fervor of service; but the book 
of remembrance is a registry of all good works, 
and all the saints will be rewarded according to the 
records in this book of remembrance. We must 
never confound simple salvation itself with re- 
wards, for we are told that many will be saved so 
as by fire, and their manifold works being erro- 
neous, or only temporal, will be consumed by the 
fire, but that others who are saved will have great 
rewards. We understand that this confession of 



A PILLAR IN THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 



93 



the names of the saints, which Jesus makes before 
the Father and His angels, involves something 
more than simple salvation from eternal death, it 
embraces a confession of their trials, the testings 
of their faith, their peculiar sufferings, their ex- 
hibitions of perfect loyalty, and their manifold 
labors, so that when Jesus comes to reward His 
holy ones, those rewards will be measured out with 
absolute equity, and infinitesimal propriety, which 
will be apparent to all the angels and the heavenly 
hosts. The rewards of those persons comprising 
the bridehood of Christ will be given at the mar- 
riage supper of the Lamb, which we shall consider 
in the succeeding chapter. 



CHAPTER XII. 

' 'A PILLAR IN THE TEMPLE OF GOD." 
Rev. 3:12. 

O the believer who advances as far in his spir- 



1 itual progress as the sixth overcometh, Jesus 
promises, "I will make him a pillar in the temple 
of my God, and he shall go no more out, and I will 
write upon him the name of my God, and the name 
of the City of my God, which is New Jerusalem, 
which cometh down out of heaven from my God, 
and I will write upon him My new name.*' Just 
before making this promise, in His address to the 
same church, He says, "Behold, I come quickly. 




STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



Hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take 
"thy crown." This announcement that He will come 
quickly is made to the church at Philadelphia, and 
as there was only one more church to be addressed, 
that of Laodicea. which represents the lukewarm 
condition of the present Protestant churches of the 
world, we understand that the coming of the Lord 
is very near. It would also seem, from the con- 
nection between the warning that no man take our 
<3rown and the promise of making us pillars in the 
temple of God, that there was an intimate relation. 
As we see, each of these promises to the overcom- 
ing Christian lies in an ascending climax, and the 
soul that has passed through the steps of experi- 
ence and life indicated by the previous overcomeths 
is now prepared to enter into a deeper union with 
God, and be incorporated into the interior structure 
of His kingdom more firmly and abidingly than 
ever. To be a "pillar in the temple of God' ? indi- 
cates that the soul has penetrated from the outer 
courts of religious life into the very center of that 
glorious spiritual structure which the Holy Ghost 
has been fashioning through the centuries. It in- 
dicates a state of spiritual life which is thoroughly 
rooted in God, and everlastingly fixed in a calm, 
sweet union with the divine attributes and the di- 
vine character. A pillar in a temple is one of its 
interior and essential portions upon which the 
•structure largely rests, which gives character, sup- 
port and beauty to the building. 

The Scriptures reveal to us in many places that 
God is forming a veritable and living temple com- 



A PILL.AR IN THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 95 

posed of regenerated and sanctified souls through- 
out the centuries, which are denominated real 
"living stones," and that the Holy Ghost is build- 
ing these purified natures up into a real living city 
or temple, and that every soul entering that struc- 
ture has its appropriate place with as much ac- 
curacy and reality as the stones of a real palace 
which have been previously carved and fashioned 
in the quarry for their several places in the build- 
ing. Paul expressly says that true believers are 
God's building, they are His temple. Peter says 
that we are to taste that the Lord is gracious, and 
that as living stones we are built up a spiritual 
house, a holy priesthood, which indicates that the 
house is a real living temple. 

At the bottom of the sea myriads of little coral 
insects begin to build themselves up unitedly in the 
coral reef. For long centuries the structure goes 
on increasing, but all hidden beneath the dark, 
green waters of the sea. At last the coral reef 
rises above the surface of the sea, and becomes 
visible to the eye, and soon it is covered with 
gorgeous foliage and tropical products. In like 
manner, through all the centuries past, and 
hidden away from physical eyesight, and the 
reason of carnal men, God has been working upon 
a marvelous structure, building for Himself a gor- 
geous temple, in which every stone is an immortal 
spirit, regenerated and purified, and filled with His 
own Spirit. This structure has not yet become 
visible, except perchance to the penetrating vision 
of angels and glorified spirits. But when Jesus 



96 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



appears and establishes His reign on the earth, 
this magnificent structure of myriads of immortal 
blood-washed souls will emerge from the dark 
waters of time, and become a visible, clearly cog- 
nizable structure in the eyes of angels and men. 
This is the city that Abraham saw in a vision, and 
that glittered down the long vista of faith to 
prophets and apostles. 

The building of the temple by King Solomon, in 
which every stone was carefully finished in the 
quarry, and, when brought together, could be deftly 
joined together without the sound of a hammer, is 
an inspired type of the spiritual temple that is now 
being constructed by the Holy Spirit as a habita- 
tion for God. Now to be admitted as a pillar in 
that temple is a mark of great favor and honor 
from God. It is evident that all believers who 
enter into that glorious structure will not rank as 
pillars, for it would be out of keeping with all 
proper interpretation to suppose that every piece 
in the temple would be a pillar. And we notice 
that this promise was not given in the earliest 
stages of the overcoming life, but reserved for the 
last stage previous to sitting with Christ in His 
throne. There are thousands of degrees of grace 
among God's children. Having the heart purged 
from indwelling sin is the lowest stage of Christian 
perfection, and, after it, there is to come a great 
work of illumination in the understanding, and the 
revelation of spiritual things, and the manifesting 
of the three persons in the Godhead to the eye of 
the mind. And then there come, in the- upper 



A PILLAR IN THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 97 

ranges of a life in the Holy Spirit, deep and 
interior experiences of divine union, where the 
faculties of the human spirit are brought into mar - 
velous and unspeakable unity with Cod, where the 
understanding becomes enlarged and united to 
God's revealed word, where the affections are in- 
expressibly expanded and united to the sympa- 
thies and feelings of the Lord Jesus, and where 
the will, in all its choices and desires, is brought 
into a supernatural fixedness with the will of God, 
and with the movements of divine providence. 
These forms of the spiritual life are what we may 
understand by being so taken up into God as to be 
made a pillar in His coming kingdom. 

In our further observations of this remarkable 
promise we notice: 

1. That there is a state of Christian life set forth 
in the Bible, which fixes the believer's destiny for- 
ever. When it pleases God to take one of His serv- 
ants and make him a pillar in the temple, Christ 
then affirms, "He shall go no more out." We are 
to take these words to mean just what they say. 
We have seen, in previous steps, that there are 
points in grace, from which the soul may retro- 
grade, and be lost forever; but the Scriptures just 
as clearly teach, that there is a point in divine life 
where the believer's glorious destiny is forever set- 
tled. The same law applies to sinners as to saints. 
We are expressly taught by our Savior, that there 
were sinners to whom He spoke, who had gone so 
far in a life of disobedience that they had fixed 
their eternal destiny for hell. They saw Him cast- 

6 



98 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



ing out devils, and, right against all the light of 
reason, common sense, and conscience, they 
charged Him with being possessed with Beelzebub. 
Jesus told them that that was the blasphemy 
against the Holy Ghost, that is, calling the work 
of the Holy Ghost the work of the devil, and doing 
it right against light. He then told them that that 
sin should never be forgiven either in this age or 
in the coming age, but that they should die in their 
sins, and where Christ was they could never come. 
This is an infallible declaration, that men may 
now put themselves where they never can or never 
will repent, and while walking upon the surface of 
this world, they are in reality a living portion of 
everlasting hell. 

It is probable that the great majority of men now 
living on earth have passed this awful point of 
destiny, and that their eternal doom is just as 
really fixed as it will be at the judgment. Now 
what is true with regard to sinners is equally true 
reversely with regard to saints, that there is a 
point in Christian progress which absolutely fixes 
the believers destiny for glory, and honor, and 
immortality in heaven. 

2. Jesus says that ' 4 I will write upon this pillar 
the name of my God." In the temples built for 
ancient kings in Egypt and Babylon there were 
large beautiful pillars upon which the reigning 
monarch would carve his name and the names of 
the various cities he built, and the battles which 
he fought, and his pedigree or dynasty. There 
have been preserved in the British Museum in 



A PILLAR IN THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 



99 



London some of these magnificent pillars taken 
from the ruins of Eastern countries, I saw them 
when I was in London, and saw the carving 
upon them of the names and historical incidents 
of the ancient kingdoms. This is the very imagery 
referred to here in this text. "When Christ says, 
"I will write upon Him the name of my God," it 
means that He will reveal to this perfect and estab- 
lished believer the most gracious and profound 
manifestation of the Fatherhood of God. 

It is the Father who awakens us and leads us to 
His son Jesus, and then Jesus saves us, and leads 
us to the sanctifying baptism and indwelling per- 
sonality of the Holy Spirit, and then the Holy 
Spirit leads us back to the Father, and gives us 
such a revelation of the person of the Father as 
the eternal fountain of all Godhead, as eternal and 
unchanging love, He gives us a view of His divine 
paternity in a far brighter and sweeter light than 
we ever knew in the earlier stages of initial grace. 
The highest stages in the Christ-life repeat over 
again what we learned in the early beginning, but 
in a much deeper and more luminous manner. What 
we need is to have the Fatherhood of God so en- 
graved upon the vital centre of our being that we 
will continually have an abiding sense of Him as 
the person of the Father. 

3. "I will write upon him the name of the City 
of my God, which is New Jerusalem." This is a 
remarkable promise, and refers to that special 
revelation which the Holy Spirit makes to the per- 
fect believer of his being made a member of the 



100 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



bridehood of Jesus, To have the name of the New 
Jerusalem engraved in the life of the soul is to re- 
ceive an inward experimental certificate from the 
Holy Ghost of being the "spouse" of the Lord 
Jesus. Young, or unestablished, Christians never 
receive this experience, and when they hear per- 
fected believers speaking of that spiritual wedlock 
of their souls with Jesus, or talking in the style of 
the language of the Song of Solomon, they do not 
understand the real purport of such language. I 
have met many thousands of Christians, in all 
stages of experience, and I never remember of 
hearing any one speak in a serious and experi- 
mental manner of the subject of divine espousal, 
except those who had consciously and fully en- 
tered the baptism of the Holy Spirit. This is why 
the Song of Solomon is so little understood and so 
blunderingly interpreted by many. That Song 
expresses the high watermark of the spiritual life. 
And it has language and metaphors so flooded with 
supernatural experiences of personal affection for 
Jesus, and yearnings after Him, which are all dry 
or gross hieroglyphics to believers who have not 
yet entered the sanctified bridehood of the Lamb. 

Our Savior gives us to understand in the ninth 
chapter of Matthew that there are some disciples 
who have not yet come into the bridehood, and 
there are others who have. The disciples of John 
said to Him: "Why do we fast often, but Thy dis- 
ciples fast not?*' Jesus said unto them: "How can 
the children of the bridechamber mourn as long as 
the bridegroom is with them?"' Now the disciples 



A PILL.AR IN THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 101 

of John were really the servants of God, but were 
serving Him in a legal way, but those disciples 
who had left John, and followed Jesus, had been 
lifted into the plane of a love service, and Jesus 
calls them ' 4 the children of the bridechamber, " 
and says that His presence with them was that of 
the bridegroom. This truth has a continual and 
far-reaching application through all the Christian 
centuries. There have ever been those who serve 
God really and truly, without entering that state 
of perfect heart-union with Jesus which the 
Bible frankly expresses under the type of mar- 
riage. 

So when Jesus promises to write the name of the 
City of God upon our hearts we are to understand 
that that City is the same one referred to in Revela- 
tion 21, where John expressly declares that the New 
Jerusalem made up of the typical number of the 
hundred and forty-four thousand is the bride, the 
Lamb's wife. So the City is identical with the 
bride, and hence the name of the City is identical 
with the name of the bride, and as we have seen a 
name in Scripture represents character, and to have 
the name of the bride, or City, written upon our 
hearts, is the same thing as having the real, spot- 
less, tender, loving character of the bride of the 
Lamb engraved upon the inner tablet of our con- 
sciousness. It is our privilege to know, even in 
this life, these supernatural experiences of grace, 
and to have, before we see His blessed face, the 
perfect inward assurance that we are forever and 
forever the spouse of the Lamb. 



102 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



4. "I will write upon him my new name." This 
new name is explained by the prophet Hosea, in 
which he describes the glory of God that shall 
fill the earth in the last days, and says: "It shall 
be at that time, saith the Lord, thou shalt no more 
call me baali," which signifies my master, "but 
thou shalt call me IsJri," which signifies my hus- 
band. This is the new name that Jesus will write 
into those who are filled with holy love. This 
writing consists of a pungent and sweet revelation 
to the soul of Christ's personal and individual love. 
In the lower degrees of grace we look upon the 
love of Jesus as of a general and universal char- 
acter. But as we advance into closer union with 
Him, His love takes on clear forms of a special and 
personal character, and when we are perfectly 
crucified, and can say with St. Paul: "The life I 
live is not my own, but the life of Christ in me/' 
then with Paul we can also say: ''The Son of God 
loved me and gave Himself for me," and this revela- 
tion of the personal affection Jesus bears for each 
of us makes Him more inexpressibly dear to us 
than all the outspread glories of Him in the gen- 
eral creation. 

The word Lamb, as used in Revelation, is pre- 
eminently the name of Jesus as the heavenly bride- 
groom, and this word Lamb in every instance in 
Revelation is in the Greek "arnion," which means 
a little, tender lamb. And so the last and highest 
revelation we have of Jesus is that of inexpressible 
gentleness and love. This is the name and the" 
character which He will engrave in the conscious- 



I WILL SUP WITH HIM. 



103 



ness of those who are perfectly established in 
union with Himself. 



UST before making the promise in connection 



J with the seventh overcometh, Jesus gives two 
preliminary promises which set forth His fellow- 
ship with us in the present state and our fellow- 
ship with Him at His heavenly banquet. Jesus is 
now visiting the churches on earth in this wide- 
spread revival of Christian holiness, and by this 
revival He is knocking at the door of all the 
churches and saying, that "if any man will open 
the door to Him, He will come in and sup with 
him. " This sets forth that fellowship which Christ 
has with His disciples in their present state in the 
flesh that He comes down in the person of the Holy 
Spirit, and identifies Himself in all the affairs of 
life with the conditions and experiences of His fol- 
lowers. 

If in walking through a field we pierce our foot 
with a thorn, instantly the nervous system, which 
is a perfect telegraphic arrangement, will notify 
the brain of the wound in the foot. If the brain 
were not thus notified, there would be no con- 
sciousness of pain in the foot. It seems that the 



CHAPTER XIII. 



I WILL SUP WITH HIM. 



Rev. 3:20. 




104 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



suffering is in that part of the body pierced by the 
thorn, but in reality the suffering is in the brain, 
which is the center of the entire nervous system, 
and the center of all sensation. Instantly on re- 
ceiving the dispatch from the afflicted member of 
the body, the brain comes clown as it were into the 
foot, and enters into perfect sympathy with that 
member. The Holy Spirit has told us that Christ 
is the Head, and that His disciples, who are united 
to Him in the Holy Ghost, constitute His mystical 
body, and that if any member of that body is in a 
suffering condition, the head shares all the phe- 
nomena of pain or pleasure, which any member of 
the body may undergo. Hence we are told that 
in all our afflictions Jesus is afflicted. 

When Saul of Tarsus was galloping to Damascus 
to torture the little flock of believers, he was ar- 
rested by the Head of the Church, who said, 
"Saul, Saul, why persecuteth thou me?" Jesus 
identified the humble saints in Damascus with Him- 
self, as our head feels the torture of any of our 
bodily members. Saul thought he was crushing- 
out some fanatics, but those fanatics turned out to 
be the vital members of the eternal Christ en- 
throned at the right hand of God. This same 
thing has been repeated thousands of times, and is 
still transpiring in man y parts of the earth. The 
humble and despised ones, who are in many 
instances looked upon as irregular cranks and un- 
manageable extremists in religion, are the mem- 
bers of the living Christ, and He still comes down 
in spirit and enters into every infinitesimal detail 



I WILL SUP WITH HIM. 



105 



of .their private lives. We have never yet half be- 
lieved all that the Scriptures teach us concerning 
that perfect measure with which Jesus identifies 
us with Himself. If we are living in blessed 
obedience to Him and trusting Him alone and fully 
on all lines, He makes every single interest of our 
whole being and life to be His own. He feels every 
pain that we have, whether physical or mental or 
spiritual. He in spirit weeps with us when we 
weep, and prays with us when we pray, and suffers 
with us when we suffer. 

The Holy Spirit is in the divine realm what our 
nervous system is in our foodies, and with infinitely 
more accuracy and certainty than our nerves can 
transmit a sensation from our extremities to the 
brain, the Holy Spirit, as the divine nerve, trans- 
mits every variety and every degree of sensation in 
the believer to His divine Head, the blessed Jesus. 
This is the purport of the promise, "I will sup with 
him." To sup with a person means to share with 
them what they may have, whether good or bad, 
joyful or sorrowful; the poor crust and a cup of 
water, or the feast of fat things. Hence Christ 
supping with us not only implies His inevitable and 
personal participation and consciousness with all 
our temptations, and tears, and struggles, but also 
that He just as consciously and as directly partici- 
pates in all our joys. He is happy in our happi- 
ness, and smiles with our smiles, and has a pleasure 
in every pure and innocent joy of His children, and 
rejoices in His spirit at every step they take in 
Christian progress. When on the earth He affirmed 



106 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



that He rejoiced in spirit at the downfall of Satan, 
but if that was a source of joy to His immaculate 
heart, how much more so does He rejoice in our 
new birth, and our sanctification, and every act of 
our loving obedience and trust to Him? 

This participation of Jesus of the love of His 
disciples is set forth in the Song of Solomon in 
these words, kk My beloved is mine, and I am his. 
He feedeth among the lilies." Several times the 
expression is used that Christ feeds among the 
lilies, and goes down into His garden to smell the 
fragrant blossoms and the spices. The lily is a 
Scripture type of a purified believer, whose white, 
clean heart gives forth in its love, and faith, and 
hope, and obedience, and heavenly aspirations, 
those sweet perfumes which are more fragrant to 
Jesus than all the odors of spicy Arabia. We are 
told in the Scripture that the prayers of the saints 
smell sweet to God, and they are emblematized as 
sweet incense of burning spices. 

Love always feeds upon love, and the heart of 
love has a mystical way of feeding itself just as 
truly as the body has of taking nourishment. 
When a mother sits by her sleeping babe, engaged 
in her daily work, and ever and anon fixes her soft, 
maternal gaze upon her little darling, could we see 
the interior mechanism of her soul, thoughts, and 
affections, we would discover that her loving 
heart was feeding on that babe in a mystical way 
just as really as the fish feed on the sea, or as the 
mind feeds on books, or as the body feeds on 
bread. In like manner Jesus bends over those 



I WILL SUP WITH HIM. 



107 



who love Him with a perfect heart. He enjoys 
their prayers, their songs, their testimonies, their 
•unselfish and loving efforts to promote His glory. 
Every loyal thought that we have toward Him, 
every desire we have to see Him, and to serve Him, 
every sacrifice we make to extend His salvation 
among men, is a little banquet to His infinite heart. 
And all this is transpiring, and so few of us ever 
take into our thoughtful appreciation even a small 
tithe of His personal, profound, and perpetual in- 
terest in us. Could we see all this as we shall see 
it some day, how it would invigorate our love, and 
fortify our zeal, and relieve our loneliness, and 
make our very hearts flutter with a bewildering 
sense of His dear presence in us and with us every 
moment of our lives. O, why is it that we do not 
believe Him more, and then surely we would love 
Him more. If we in reality perfectly apprehend 
the truth of His words, "Lo I am. with you all the 
days, even to the end of the age," how that living 
faith would transform our inner and outer lives, 
and beget within us that habit of recollection and 
of practicing the presence of God, which would 
throw the very luster of heaven upon our spirit and 
our behavior. And yet He is true to His own word, 
and whether we fully apprehend it or not. He does 
sup with us if we sincerely throw the door of our 
hearts open to Him for His unreserved possession. 



108 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

"HE WILL SUP WITH ME." 
Rev. 3:20. 

JUST as truly as Jesus comes down in spirit to 
sup with those who fully admit Him into their 
hearts, so they will be taken up at His second com- 
ing, and sup with Him in that banquet, of which 
He has told us in His parables and through the 
lips of His apostles. The special promise con- 
nected with the seventh overcometh is that of sit- 
ting with Jesus in His millennial throne; but be- 
fore that throne is actually set up on this earth 
there must intervene that great crisis which is re- 
ferred to in the 20th verse of this third chapter of 
Revelation, namely : that of sitting with Jesus at 
the marriage supper of the Lamb. If we compile 
all the various events which will be concomitant 
with the coming of Christ in the clouds of heaven 
we find them to comprise the following items: The 
Lord Jesus will descend from the right hand of 
the Father, accompanied by tens of thousands of 
angels and saints. He will be preceded by the 
archangel, who will blow the trumpet of God for 
the first resurrection. Those sainted dead who 
during their life in the flesh were regenerated, and 
sanctified, and sufficiently tried to constitute them 
martyrs in spirit will be raised from the dead, and 
glorified, and taken up in the air to meet Jesus. 
Also those Christians on earth who are entirely 



HE WILL SUP WITH ME. 



109 



yielded to God, and whose hearts have been puri- 
fied and filled with the Holy Spirit, constituting 
them the five wise virgins, who have oil in their 
vessels, will be suddenly glorified and caught up 
in the clouds with those of the first resurrection to 
meet the Lord. (Compare I. Thess. 4, and Revela- 
tion 20.) When Jesus thus appears in the clouds 
of glory, He will not put His foot on this earth at 
that time, for He tells us He will come as a flash of 
lightning from the east to the west, and encircle 
the entire globe, and gather out His elect ones 
from the four winds of heaven, or as it is distinctly 
prophecied in Psalms 50: "Our God shall come, 
and He shall call to the heavens, and the earth, 
that He may judge His people." The word "judge" 
here does not mean to condemn, but to discrimi- 
nate, or discern who His people are, and He will 
then say: "Gather my saints together unto me, 
those who have made a covenant with me by sacri- 
fice." This is an express declaration that only 
those who are really saints, and who have made a 
covenant by the complete sacrifice of themselves 
to God, shall be- gathered up. At the same time 
we are told that all nations and kindred shall wail 
because of Him, and again, that people will run in 
perfect consternation to hide themselves in dens 
and caves of the earth. 

After Jesus has taken away His elect ones, God 
the Father, as the Ancient of Days in Daniel, will 
institute the great judgment tribulations on the 
world for having rejected Jesus, and on the fallen 
churches for having rejected the baptism of the 



110 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



Holy Ghost, Those awful tribulations are de- 
scribed by Jeremiah, 25th chapter, and by Ezekiel 
in the 38th chapter, and by St. John in Revelation, 
chapter 18 and chapter 19:17 to 21, and in a great 
many other places in Scripture. While these 
tribulations are taking place in all the earth, Jesus 
and His elect saints, who have been resurrected or 
translated, will be in some heavenly place, which 
is described in Psalms 15 as "ivory palaces," and 
partake of that divine banquet, which is prophe- 
sied in the parable of the king's wedding, and in 
the Song of Solomon and in Revelation 19. Con- 
cerning this supper we will notice: 

1. That it is emphatically a supper of the per- 
fected and then glorified believers with Jesus. 
Now just as truly, and perfectly, and minutely 
as Jesus comes down in spirit to sup with His 
saints here, and enters into all the details and ex- 
periences of their lives, so, on the other hand, the 
glorified saints, in supping with Jesus, will ascend 
up into His glory, and be admitted into every 
secret of His glorious personality, and life, and 
kingdom, and joy, and honor, and be made to par- 
ticipate in every variety of His bliss, and every de- 
tail of His glory, and every majesty of His king- 
dom. What little we have learned of Jesus is 
simply of His humiliation, and suffering, and death; 
that is, Jesus in His prophetic and priestly offices, 
but we have scarcely begun to learn anything of 
Him as a king in the royalty of His royal majesty 
and those manifold and uncreated glories that the 
Father has given to Him. Just so truly as Jesus 



HE WILL SUP WITH ME. 



Ill 



now comes to us in spirit, so truly will we who are 
prepared go to Him in a body. Just as truly as He 
comes to us now invisibly, we shall go to Him 
visibly. Just as truly as He now consciously feels 
our sorrows and pains, just so truly we shall then 
consciously enter into His bliss and the manifold 
departments of His joy and glory. Just as truly 
as He now identifies Himself with His suffering 
saints, speaking of them as a part of Himself, so 
truly at that day the saints will realize that Jesus 
is one with them, that His glory is their glory, His 
bliss their bliss, His real majesty their own 
majesty, His rights as the ruler of the world their 
own rights. We have no thoughts to think these 
things, and no words adequate to express them. 
What will it be to enter into the joy of our Lord, 
and yet that is the exact promise. The joys of 
Jesus are manifold. It is an eternal joy for Him to 
be the only begotten Son of the Father. It is 
another joy to be the second Adam, the only pure 
man that never had sin. It is another joy to be 
the redeemer of sinful men, and to love them to 
the death. It is another joy to be the head of the 
church, the shepherd of God's sheep. It is another 
joy to be the giver of the blessed Holy Ghost, to 
sanctify and fill the breast of His mystical body. 
It is another joy to be the Creator of all worlds 
and all beings, to be the architect of every grain 
of sand, every insect, every living creature, and 
every bright star that glitters in its orbit. It is 
another joy to be the only person in the universe 
who is the revealer of the Eternal Father, and the 



112 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



outspoken word from the bosom of that Father. It 
is another joy for Him to sit in judgment on the 
human race, and deal out to each creature his exact 
reward with perfect justice. It is another joy that 
He wears upon His head many crowns as the ap- 
pointed and only sovereign of the three empires of 
nature, grace, and glory, and to govern the worlds, 
and all angels, and all men in absolute goodness 
and equity. It is another joy that He is to come 
back to this earth, where He had His human birth, 
and from whose dust His precious body was formed, 
and where He shed His precious blood, and to 
govern this earth in His humanity as the Son of 
Man. These are only a few of the many joys that 
concenter and unite in the soul of Jesus, and make 
that soul to be a white furnace of inexpressible 
bliss. And yet into all these joys wdiich we can 
feebly think of, and others that we cannot imagine, 
we are to enter if w T e are prepared. 

This is what it will be to sup with Jesus, to share 
all His fullness and estates just as fully, beauti- 
fully, tenderly, and consciously as a bride can 
share the joys and estates and sovereignty of her 
husband, who is the king over a great empire. 
Could we but get a glimpse of heaven, a small 
fraction of what it will be to sup with Jesus, we 
should almost be beside ourselves w 7 ith holy love 
and flaming zeal in His service here. 

2. We are fully warranted from many passages 
in Scripture in believing that in heaven, in the 
glorified state, we shall still have some kind of 
created nourishment. Many persons have formed 



HE WILL SUP WITH ME. 



113 



■unnatural and unscriptural notions of the heavenly- 
state as being diametrically opposed to everything 
in the present stale of existence. But such should 
not be the case. Those persons who deny the 
literal resurrection of the body, do so from a foolish 
and unscriptural fancy that matter in and of itself, 
is too degraded to exist in a glorified manner. But 
matter of itself is not sinful, and the three per- 
sons of the Godhead walked and communed with 
Adam and Eve before their fall in a literal and ma- 
terial world, and their literal bodies of flesh and 
blood, and their feeding literally on the fruit of 
the trees, did not in the least hinder this world 
from being at that time a part of heaven, nor hin- 
dered in the least their fellowship with angels and 
with God, and to suppose that after we are glorified 
we shall no longer need any form of created nour- 
ishment is both unphilosophical and unscriptural. 
The Lord Jesus and two angels visited Abraham j ust 
before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and 
the patriarch entertained them, and cooked for them 
a dinner, of which they partook. It is expressly de- 
clared in Scripture that when God fed the Israelites 
with manna from heaven that ' 'He gave them angels' 
food to eat." If this Scripture does not mean ex- 
actly what it says, what can it mean? God does 
not mock us with hypocritical language, and to 
whittle such Scriptures away into a mere ghostly 
metaphor is the very essence of unbelief, which 
sets up the human reason as being wiser than the in- 
fallible statements of the Holy Spirit. The angels 

live on some kind of created diet like the manna. 

- • 8- ; : - 



114 



STEPS TO THE THRONE, 



After Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt to 
Mt. Sinai, we are told that he and the seventy- 
elders went up into Mt. Horeb, and they saw the 
God of Israel, and there was under His feet a paved 
work of the sapphire stone, and also they saw God, 
and did eat and drink. (Ex. 24.) This is a pro- 
phetic type of the glorified saints, after being 
taken out of the world, as the Jews were taken out 
of Egypt, going up into the Mountains of the Lord, 
and having the beatific vision of God, and eating 
and drinking with the Lord Jesus in His heavenly 
kingdom. 

"When Jesus instituted the Lord's supper, after 
eating the roast lamb and bread, He took the cup 
and gave it to the eleven disciples (for Judas had 
left), and said, "This is my blood of the New 
Testament, but I will not drink henceforth of the 
fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new 
with you in my Father's kingdom.'' It is worse 
than trifling to twist these words of Jesus into a 
mere mythical meaning. We see here that Judas 
left before this cup was passed around, and only 
those were present who were the real elect. So 
only those will sup with Jesus in His coming ban- 
quet, who are the real holy and tried ones. The 
cup of wine that Jesus gave to His disciples was 
not mythical, nor imaginary w T ine, but the real fruit 
of the vine; and, just as literally as that was the fruit 
of the vine, Jesus affirms that He will drink of the 
real fruit of the vine with His saints in that day in His 
Father's kingdom. Hence the one wine is just as 
real as the other. (Matt. 26.) Again, St. Luke 



HE WILL SUP WITH ME. 



115 



reports the words of Jesus, that those disciples 
who continue with Christ in His temptations, He 
says to such, "I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my 
Father has appointed unto me, that ye may eat and 
drink at my table, in my kingdom, and sit on 
thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." 
(Luke 22.) These words mean exactly what they 
say. That just as really as God the Father has ap- 
pointed Jesus to the kingdom, Jesus in turn ap- 
points His elect saints to be every one of them 
princes and princesses, and to have rulership in a 
real literal government. And He says, without 
any equivocation, that these elect ones shall eat 
and drink at His table. These words will be ful- 
filled at the marriage supper of the Lamb, and then 
this supper will be followed by these elect saints 
sitting on thrones and judging and governing the 
twelve tribes of Israel; that is, the apostles will 
come back from the wedding, and all the twelve 
tribes will be restored to Palestine in the millen- 
nial age, and accept the Christ as their Messiah, 
and these twelve tribes will be governed by the 
glorified apostles and saints. And so the promise 
made in the first overcometh concerning the eating 
of the tree of life will have just as real a fulfillment 
as Adam and Eve partook of the fruit in the garden 
of Eden. Because the Scripture has a spiritual ap- 
plication that does not hinder it from having an 
outward and a literal fulfillment. 

3. Another class of events which will transpire 
at the marriage supper of the Lamb will be the 
judging of the members who comprise the bride- 



116 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



hood, and the giving to each one of them their re- 
wards, and assigning to each one of those glori- 
fied millions, who are typified by the hundred and 
forty-four thousand, their respective places in that 
glorious army, that living city. That will be 
the time when all the living stones which have 
been quarried from the mines of earth, and fash- 
ioned by divine grace, wilhbe silently and sweetly 
knit together, to make up the radiant whole, of 
which the building of the temple by King Solomon 
was a prophetic emblem. King David is a type of 
Jesus in His humiliation and suffering, and King 
Solomon is a type of Jesus in His millennial reign 
on earth. And as King David, before his death, 
prepared the material for the building of the tem- 
ple, and then Solomon topk the material and built 
the structure, so in like manner Jesus, in His hu- 
miliation, sufferings and death, and through the 
patient operation of the Holy Ghost in this present 
age, has been preparing the material for the struc- 
ture of the New Jerusalem, then Jesus in His sec- 
ond coming, and at His marriage banquet, will 
carry out the typology of King Solomon, and there 
form into a gorgeous structure the living souls 
that make the city, which is like pure gold and 
shining with the glory of God. We have another 
type of this city formation in the acts of Moses, 
who, after bringing the Israelites out of Egypt to 
Mt. Sinai, there formed them into a living city, and 
arranged them according to a divine pattern, put- 
ting three tribes on the north, three on the east, 
three on the south, and three on the west, giving 



HE WILE SUP WITH ME. 



117 



to. each tribe, and family, and individual, his exact 
place in that beautiful portable city, according to 
the mind of God, and in the hollow square he 
placed the glorious tabernacle, upon which rested 
the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by 
night. That transaction, we are told, was accord- 
ing to the pattern of things in heaven, and it had 
a meaning infinitely beyond the time then present* 
and stretched away across the centuries to that 
crowning historical event of the gathering out of 
the true Israel from the Egypt of this present 
world, and forming them each one from the differ- 
ent nations and the different centuries in his exact 
place in the divine city, where each of God's saints 
will find his proper place as accurately as each bone 
in the body has its appropriate fitting of bone with 
bone, and part with part. It is a vision of that 
living city of glorified saints that John described 
in Revelation 21. Each of those twelve precious 
stones will have their counterpart in a twelvefold 
variety of holy character. 

If the reader will turn to the 19th chapter of 
Revelation, he will notice in the first part of the 
chapter an account of this marriage supper of the 
Lamb, and while that is taking place up in the 
heavenly places, in the latter part of the chapter 
will be found the description of the great supper of 
the wrath of God which is taking place among the 
nations on the earth. The word "sun," in verse 17, 
symbolizes royalty, or heads of government, and 
an angel will move all the kings and heads of gov- 
ernment into a declaration of war. The "fowls" 



118 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



referred to always signify demons, and these 
demons take delight in bloodshed and war. A 
battlefield is the devil's revival, and his supper 
table, and so, when captains, and kings, and 
horses, and soldiers are being slaughtered in war, 
the devils have their banquet. Thus we see clearly 
that while in verse 9 Jesus and His saints are 
having the wedding supper in the air, the whole 
earth is in a state of carnage and suffering in the 
great tribulations as described in verses 17 to 20. 

If we expect to be admitted to the marriage of the 
Lamb we must be arrayed in fine linen, clean and glis- 
tening, as the Greek puts it, for the fine linen is the 
righteousness of saints, and blessed are they which 
are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. 

As to the length of time which the great tribula- 
tions will last, and the coetaneous time occupied 
by the marriage supper, from all the best data we 
can gather, it will be about forty years. Some 
have supposed that two and one-half years, and 
others have thought that seven years, will be the 
length of time for these events, but I am con- 
vinced that they will occupy about the period of 
forty years. If we examine the time set forth in 
the last chapter of Daniel, and deduct the pro- 
phetic day — year — of the time for the treading 
down of Jerusalem to the opening of the new age, 
it leaves between thirty-five and forty years for the 
great tribulations and the heavenly banquet. 

Noah's flood is a perfect type of the second com- 
ing of Christ and concomitant events. We are told 
that after Noah and his family went up into the 



HE WILL SUP WITH ME. 



119 



ark, ''that it rained forty days and nights." The 
ascent of Noah in the ark represents the ascent of 
the translated ones in the air, and the forty days 
of rain represent the forty years of tribulation, as 
we are told, both by Moses and Ezekiel, that a day 
in prophecy stands for a year. And then when 
the flood began to subside, we are told, that from 
the time the ark rested on Mt. Ararat, that Noah 
waited forty days, and then sent forth the dove. 
So both at the beginning of the flood, and at its 
drying up, we have a forty year emblem. As far 
as we can cipher out the time of the ten plagues, 
which were sent on the Egyptians, they covered 
the space of forty days. That is another emblem 
of the forty years of tribulation on the whole earth. 
In the 29th chapter of Ezekiel, he prophesies the 
utter desolation of the land of Egypt, and says the 
land should "not be inhabited forty years," which 
is another prophetic type of the desolations in all 
the earth, after the saints are taken out. We know 
that the number forty in Scripture always signifies 
the period for punishing, proving, trying, and test- 
ing a person, or nation, or thing. Prom the time 
Jesus was born until He ascended to heaven, cov- 
ered the duration of one generation of thirty-three 
years. During that time there was the winding up 
of the Jewish age, and the opening up of the 
Christian Gentile age; and so it would seem, that 
in the transition period, from the close of the pres- 
ent Gentile age to the opening of the new millen- 
nial age, there will again be about the space of 
one generation. 



120 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



After the Hebrews left Egypt, and 'reached Mt, 
Horeb, Moses went up into the mountain and spent 
forty days and nights with God, which is a clear 
and beautiful type, that after the saints leave this 
earth they will spend forty years with God in the 
upper regions of the air. As Moses after forty 
days descended from the mountain top with his 
face radiant with the glory of God, to be the law- 
giver and leader of the armies of God, in like man- 
ner, the elect saints, after spending forty years 
w 7 ith Jesus at His heavenly banquet, will return 
back to this earth filled with the radiant glory of 
God; and, as Jesus says, they will shine like the 
sun in His kingdom, and at that time they will, 
under Christ, take charge as judges, leaders, rulers, 
and teachers, of all the nations of the earth. Hence 
it would seem, from all these analogies, that the 
marriage supper of the Lamb, and the great tribu- 
lations, will extend through the period of forty 
years. 



CHAPTER XV. 

"IN MY THRONE. " 
Rev. 3:21. 

WE have now come to the last of the seven 
overcomeths, which brings us up to the 
period just after supping with Jesus on high and 
the setting up of His theocratic throne in the earth. 



IN MY THRONE. 



121 



"To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with 
mo in my throne, even as I also overcame and am 
set clown with my Father in His throne.' 5 To take 
an explicit promise like this, and confine it only to 
a mystical and spiritual significance, is to do great 
violence to the word of God. We know that a 
"throne" is the head and center of a government, 
of a kingdom, and to sit in a throne means to oc- 
cupy the place of royalty and share the supreme 
authority, and unless Jesus has a real literal king- 
dom of His own, and unless He is going to receive 
His perfectly loyal followers into participation 
with Him in the dominion and ruler ship in that 
kingdom, then there are scores of passages of 
Scripture which are utterly meaningless. In the 
book of Daniel we have a description of four great 
kingdoms that should arise in the earth, and then 
a description of the kingdom of the Son of Man, 
which should break in pieces all the other king- 
doms, as a stone cut out of the mountain without 
hands. 

Now, if the kingdom of the Son of Man is merely 
mystical, then the other four kingdoms are merely 
mystical also, and on the other hand, if the four 
kingdoms described by Daniel were real, veritable 
kingdoms on this earth, then with the same abso- 
lute certainty the kingdom of the Lord Jesus will 
be real and veritable upon this earth. The one is 
no more mythical than is the other. In looking 
into this promise of sitting with Christ in His 
throne, let us consider the following items: 

1. The Scriptures nowhere tell us that the Lord 



122 



STEPS TO THE THRONE, 



Jesus has yet occupied His own throne. This may 
startle some at first, but let the Word of God settle 
it. The eternal Son of God is equal with the 
Father in nature, and substance, and attributes. 
But let us remember that God the Father has given 
to His Son Jesus, as a God-Man, as the Son of Man, 
and as the Savior of Men, a distinct throne and 
government over man and over this earth. Now 
all the Scriptures which speak of Jesus ascending 
on high represent Him as sitting "with the Father 
on the Father's throne," and "at the right hand of 
the Father," as a "mediator between God and man," 
but not one of these Scriptures speak of Jesus 
being on His own throne as the Son of Man. We 
read in the 7th chapter of Acts that when Stephen 
was being stoned to death he looked up into heaven 
and saw T the glory of God, and Jesus standing on 
the right hand of God, and he said: "I see the 
heavens opened and the Son of Man standing on 
the right hand of God." Here there is no vision of 
Jesus being on His Messianic throne, but of His 
being at the right hand of the Father's throne. 

In the second chapter of Acts, Peter is expound- 
ing the Messiahship of Jesus as the lineal son and 
heir of King David, and quotes that Psalm where 
the Lord said to Jesus: "Sit thou on my right 
hand, until I make thy enemies thy footstool." 
God the Father has promised to conquer the ene- 
mies of Jesus, and especially to subdue and bring 
back to Christ the twelve tribes of Israel. This 
the Father will do in His judgment as the Ancient 
of Days, in the great tribulations He w r ill make 



IN MY THRONE. 



123 



the nations of the earth, and especially the de- 
scendants of Abraham, so humble that they will 
gladly welcome Jesus back from the wedding, and 
be His footstool for His millennial kingdom. At 
that time Jesus will ascend His own throne as King 
of the World and Messiah of the twelve tribes. 
But during the interval between the ascension of 
Christ from Mt. Olivet to His second coming, Jesus 
is on the Father's throne, interceding for His peo- 
ple, and awaiting the hour to take His own throne. 

In the third chapter of Colossians the believer' 
is represented as rising from the death of sin, and 
seeking w T ith all his heart those things which are 
above, ' 'where Christ sitteth on the right hand 
of God." Here there is no allusion to Christ 
being on His own throne, but on the Father's 
throne. We read in the ninth chapter of He- 
brews that Christ has entered into the holy of 
holies in heaven, "to appear in the presence of God 
for us." We again read that He is "at the right 
hand of the Majesty on high," and again that He is 
on the throne of grace, that is, of merciful inter- 
cession, where He can bestow the gifts of repent- 
ance, and saving faith, and salvation. But in none 
of these Scriptures do w T e get the representation of 
Jesus being on His own individual throne as a 
glorified man to govern the world. 

2. When we come to search into all those numer- 
ous passages that set forth Jesus as a ruler and 
a king over the nations, we learn that He, as a 
glorified man, has been appointed of God the 
Father to rule this world. Just as literally as God 



124 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



made Adam and Eve to be a king and queen, and 
to have dominion over everything on this earth, so 
Jesus, as the second Adam and the heir of David, 
is^to own and govern this world, not merely as an 
eternal person of the Godhead, but as an incarnate 
God, as a perfectly holy and obedient man, as the 
son of Mary and the son of David, He is to rule 
this world. In His divinity as the Creator of All 
Worlds, He owns this globe, but in His humanity, 
here is where His body was prepared for Kim, out 
of the dust of this planet. Here is where He was 
born of a human mother and had His temporal gen- 
eration. This earth has been moistened with His 
tears and baptized with His blood, and He as a 
Man has absolute rights over this planet, and over 
all its population, in a manner different from His 
rights over any other material world. This line of 
thought is often utterly omitted when people read 
the Scriptures concerning the kingdom of Jesus. 

David was the founder of God's theocratic gov- 
ernment among men. He was a man and a king 
after God's own heart, and the Lord made an eternal 
covenant with David, that of the seed of His flesh 
He would raise up a king that should govern this 
world forever and ever. Jesus was, in His human 
nature, the lineal offspring of King David, and is 
to occupy David's throne, and enlarge, and perfect, 
and establish, that theocratic government, which 
was started in the reign of King David. Hence 
Jesus is compared to David, far more than to any 
and all other men in the Bible, and His kingdom 
as a glorified man is so frequently termed ''the 



IN MY THRONE. 



125 



kingdom of David," and His throne as a son of 
man, is often called 4 'the throne of David." In the 
third chapter of Hosea, we read the prophecy of 
the kingdom of Israel going into eclipse, -until the 
millennial reign of Jesus. 6 'For the children of 
Israel shall abide many days without a king, and 
without a prince, and without a sacrifice." These 
words are literally fulfilled in the cessation of the 
Jewish government, which has now lasted nearly 
thirteen centuries. "Afterward shall the children 
of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and 
David their King, and shall fear the Lord and His 
goodness in the latter days." Here is a specific 
promise of the return of the twelve tribes of Israel 
to the Lord in the latter days, that is, in the millen- 
nium, and then Jesus, who is here called David, 
will be their king, and they will love and serve Him 
throughout His millennial reign. Language could 
hardly be more definite than this prophecy, and 
that language has not yet been fulfilled. We read 
in the 30th chapter of Jeremiah of the time when 
the people of "Israel shall return to the Lord, and 
to David their king, and that at that time their 
King David which is Jesus, shall save them 
from afar, and Jacob shall return, and shall be 
in rest, and be quiet, and none shall make him 
afraid." 

The prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, 
contain many descriptions of the theocratic reign 
of the Lord Jesus on this earth, as King David, or 
as the Son of David. To deny the literal fulfill- 
ment of these prophecies is to convert the Word of 



126 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



God into Swedenborgian mysticism, and do violence 
to all the rules of scriptural interpretation. 

In the 34th chapter of Ezekiel, we have a most 
exact and beautiful portrayal of the reign of the 
Lord on this earth, under the name of David, at 
which time, 4 'He will make with all nations a cove- 
nant of peace, and will cause evil beasts to cease 
out of the land, and the people shall dwell safely 
in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods,'' and at 
that time He will make the trees of the field yield 
their fruit, and make the earth to yield her in- 
crease, and everything shall be safe in the land, 
and this King David shall break the bands of every 
yoke, and be at that time a plant of renown. I 
these words do not mean exactly what they say, 
then prophecy is a mere myth. In the first chap- 
ter of the Gospel by Luke, the angel Gabriel, who 
announced to Mary the birth of Jesus, told her ex- 
pressly, "that her son Jesus should be great, and 
should be called the Son of the Highest, and that 
the Lord God should give unto Him the throne of 
His Father David, and that He should reign over 
the house of Jacob forever, and that of His king- 
dom there should be no end." Now remember, that 
these words of the angel Gabriel were addressed 
to Mary as the Mother of Jesus, and they prophesy 
the throne that Jesus should have as a man, and as 
the royal heir of King David. Jesus has never yet 
ruled over the twelve tribes of Jacob, as their own 
king, and so this prophecy has not yet been ful- 
filled, but it is to have an exact and literal accom- 
plishment. 



IN MY THRONE. 



127 



If we notice the parables of Jesus concerning 
His second coming, He so often says that at that 
time "the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of His 
glory," and at the same time those who have fol- 
lowed Him fully shall be glorified and sit with Him 
on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." 
(Matt. 19:27,28.) And again, He speaks of "the Son 
of Man coming in His kingdom." He says that 
"when the Son of Man shall come in His glory, 
that then He shall sit upon the throne of His 
glory." (Matt. 25:31.) Jesus never speaks of sit- 
ting on His throne in His glory except in connec- 
tion with His second coming. 

Thus we see, from a great number of Scriptures, 
the theocratic throne of David is to be restored and 
established in a literal government over all the na- 
tions of this world. In harmony with this line of 
exposition, we see in the 19th chapter of Revela- 
tion an account of 4 'the Lamb's wife making her- 
self ready, and being arrayed in fine linen, and then 
of her being called to the marriage supper of the 
Lamb; and this is followed by a glorious descrip- 
tion of the Lord Jesus, with eyes as a flame of fire, 
and on His head many crowns, and being clothed 
in a vesture dipped in blood, and the armies in 
heaven, that is, the glorified members of His bride- 
hood, following him, riding upon white horses, and 
this is followed by His taking charge of all the na- 
tions, and smiting the refractory elements of society 
as with a rod of iron, and then of His assuming the 
title of King of kings and Lord of lords." 

Thus we see that each verse presents a succes- 



128 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



sive unfolding of consecutive events which are 
concurrent with the marriage supper, and im- 
mediately following that supper. This is the 
same line of truth presented in the closing verses 
of this third chapter of Revelation, where the 
translated saints and the resurrection saints are to 
sup with Jesus, and this is followed by Christ as- 
suming the throne of David, and re-establishing 
the theocratic kingdom on earth, and then taking 
the glorified members of His bridehood into part- 
nership with Himself, and giving them places in 
His government as sitting with Him on the throne. 
It is in the light of this interpretation that we are 
to understand that large class of Scriptures which 
set forth that "if w r e suffer with Him we shall also 
reign with Him." But let us remember that the 
word suffer in this connection does not mean any 
kind of suffering, but it is the same word which is 
used of the crucifixion of Jesus, that is, "if Ave are 
crucified with Him we shall reign with Him." 
There is not a single text of Scripture which repre- 
sents the new birth of itself as qualifying any one 
to reign with Christ in His coming kingdom, but 
in every single place where reigning with Christ 
is spoken of there are terms used which indicate 
something more than justification, terms strongly 
expressive of being dead to sin, of following 
Christ to the death, of being purified, made white, 
and tried. 

3. Now Christ affirms that those who are the 
overcomers will share His coming kingdom just as 
emphatically and as surely as He at the present 



IN MY THRONE. 



129 



time as a glorified man is sharing the Father's gov- 
ernment in heaven. Jesus tells us in this 21st 
verse that He has overcome, . and is now sitting 
down with the Father in the Father's throne, and 
just as much as th>at is a literal fact, so He affirms 
that His perfectly loyal disciples, shall sit in His 
government when He reigns on the earth. 

In a vast empire there are a great many depart- 
ments of government. When we look into the 
structure of the Kingdom of Great Britain or the 
United States we find a great many departments of 
government and each of the heads of these various 
departments have under them officers and assist- 
ants, divided and subdivided, extending into ramified 
details, covering the whole territory of government 
in its legislative and judicial and executive func- 
tions, at home and abroad, in its commercial, edu- 
cational, religious, agricultural, scientific, and so- 
cial relations, furnishing busy employment and a 
field for the exercise of innumerable gifts and capa- 
bilities to many thousauds of persons. Thus when 
the Lord Jesus, as a glorified man and the crowned 
heir of David, shall sit on His throne as the King 
of this World, He will institute the greatest and 
most glorious and most diversified empire ever 
known to the human mind. All the kings that 
have ever existed in this world in their most per- 
fect state of glory will be in comparison with the 
theocratic Kingdom of Jesus only as a feeble glow- 
worm to the splendor of a noonday summer sun. 
Jesus Himself speaks of Himself and His glorified 
disciples "as shining like the sun in that kingdom." 

9 



130 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



We are told by the prophet Daniel that during 
the great tribulations under the judgments of the 
Ancient of Days, "that the thrones of the earth 
will be cast down/' that is, every human govern- 
ment on this earth will go to wreck in those tribu- 
lations, and all the ecclesiastical organization of 
the fallen churches will crumble to pieces, all se- 
cret societies and corporate organizations and fed- 
erated associations will at that time crumble to 
pieces, and when Jesus "returns from the wed- 
ding to take His kingdom," He will find the people 
on the earth in a state of practical anarchy and 
governmental dissolution. It will be out of the 
wreck of all these forms of government that Jesus 
will organize His kingdom and remodel the 
geography of the globe and appoint to each mem- 
ber of His' glorified bridehood an appropriate office 
of service and a principality of honor in that 
kingdom. These various principalities are more 
distinctly set forth in the 4th chapter of Revelation 
which we are to hereafter consider, 



CHAPTER XVI. 

"THE RAINBOW AROUND THE THRONE." 
Rev. 4:3. 

IN understanding the Book of Revelation we must 
remember that, while it is in some sense a con- 
secutive unveiling of historical events, from the 



THE RAINBOW AROUND THE THRONE. 131 

days of St. John to the end of the Christian age, 
and the end of the millennium at the same time, 
the visions are given in different sections, so that 
in some respects the same historical ground is re- 
peated over again. As for instance the first four 
chapters is a setting forth of events from the days 
of John up to the millennial kingdom with especial 
reference to stages of the visible church. Then 
another series of visions is given with reference to 
the political history of the nations, such as the 
rise of popery and Mohammedism. Then another 
series of visions with reference to God's judgments 
upon the nations, the downfall of Romanism, and 
the great tribulations. 

As we now come to the fourth chapter of Revela- 
tion, we have here the setting up of Christ's theo- 
cratic throne in the Kingdom of God on this earth. 
Hence the events prophesied in this chapter occur 
immediately after the marriage supper of the 
Lamb. As it is said in the first verse of this chap- 
ter: 4 'Come up hither, and I will show thee the 
things which must be hereafter" — that is, such 
as will take place immediately after the things 
which are prophesied in the close of the third 
chapter. Then John says: "I beheld, and a 
throne was set up in heaven." Let us remember 
our key of interpretation in the first chapter, that 
this word "heaven" means the Kingdom of God on 
earth. This throne does not mean the eternal 
throne of the triune Godhead, for that we know was 
set up from all eternity, and neither John nor any 
angel saw when it was instituted. But this throne 



132 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



is surely that of David, which belongs to Jesus 
Christ as David's son, as the King of the Jews, as 
the Redeemer and heir of the world, and this 
throne, which is another word for the theocratic 
government, will be set up on this earth, when 
Jesus and His glorified bridehood return from the 
wedding, after the great tribulations, and imme- 
diately after the chaining and binding of Satan, 
which is described in the twentieth chapter, You 
will notice that in the twentieth chapter the angel is 
sent to bind Satan, and shut him up a thousand 
years, and the next verse says that there were 
thrones set up, which are the thrones to be occu- 
pied by tho glorified saints, who are to share the 
government with Jesus, and on these thrones were 
placed those martyrs, or those entirely devoted 
saints who had in them in this life the martyr 
spirit for Jesus, and it is expressly said "that they 
shall live and reign with Christ a thousand years.'' 

Now this throne spoken of in the fourth chapter, 
surrounded by the rainbow, and filled with the liv- 
ing creatures, is the instituting of the millennial 
government over the nations. 

1. It is clearly set forth in Scripture that this 
millennial throne will be set up in Jerusalem. Per- 
haps it is not sufficiently understood that Palestine 
is the very heart of the world, and just about the 
center of the globe geographically, and with refer- 
ence to the world's population. So much , so that 
if all human beings were compelled by some stern 
necessity to assemble at any one given spot on the 
earth, they could all meet at Palestine easier and 



THE RAINBOW AROUND THE THRONE. 133 

quicker than at any other place on earth. Moses 
tells us that when the Most High divided to all the 
nations of the world their several inheritance, and 
when He separated the sons of Adam into their 
nationalities, that He set the boundaries of the peo- 
ple, that is, their geographical limits, according to 
the number of the children of Israel. (Deut. 32.) 
From this I learn that God constituted the twelve 
tribes of Israel, the very historical center of all the 
nations of mankind, and gave them the Land of 
Canaan, which is the geographical center of the 
globe. This fact has a marvelous significance, 
which perhaps few of us have ever apprehended. 
The Land of Canaan is a miniature world in itself, 
embracing within the narrow limits of one hundred 
and fifty miles one way, by fifty and seventy-five 
miles the other, all the climates of the world, from 
everlasting snow to everlasting summer, and all 
the products of the world. So that it is a miniature 
world, and is to have a history in the coming age 
more marvelous than anything in former ages, in 
which the extraordinary prophecies of Scripture 
will be fulfilled. 

There are prophecies in the 33d chapter of Isaiah, 
concerning Zion and Jerusalem, which have never 
been fulfilled, and which have more than a mere 
spiritual application, for h is Zion and the City of 
Jerusalem which is to be a quiet habitation, and 
never taken down, and never removed, and it is 
there that the Lord will reveal Himself. There are 
to be rivers and streams, upon which there are no 
galley slave boats, or war ships, but where the 



134 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



King shall be seen in His beauty, and where the 
lame shall take the prey, and where the inhabitant 
shall not say he is sick. 

We are told in the 3d chapter of Jeremiah, of the 
return of the backsliding Israel, and "at that time 
Ave shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord, 
and all the nations shall be gathered into it, to the 
name of the Lord, to Jerusalem." That prophecy 
has never yet been fulfilled, but will receive its per- 
fect fulfillment when Jesus returns from the wed- 
ding, and sets up His theocratic government as the 
throne of David in Jerusalem, and then literally all 
the nations of the earth will be, by their repre- 
sentatives, gathered to Jerusalem. This will be 
the time when the prophecy in the 14th of Revela- 
tion will be fulfilled, where John says, "I looked, 
and lo, a Lamb stood on the Mount Zion, and with 
Him an hundred and forty and four thousand, hav- 
ing His Father's name written in their foreheads. " 
Here Ave see again, that the setting up of Christ's 
millennial government, is accompanied by that 
special number of glorified saints who compose the 
bride of the Lamb, 4, and who were the first fruits 
redeemed from among the nations, and who follow 
the Lamb whithersoeA r er He goeth." We are told 
in the Apocrypha, that when the Lord shall reign 
on the earth in His glory, that the City of Jerusa- 
lem should be rebuilt with sapphires and diamonds, 
and it is very probable that God has A^ast mines of 
sapphires and diamonds, hid away in some moun- 
tain range, which He will not let any one discover 
until that time. 



THE RAINBOW AROUND THE THRONE. 135 

2., "He that sat upon the throne was to look 
upon, like a jasper and the sardius." This is a 
vision of the inexpressible beauty and glory of 
Jesus as He will appear to His saints and the peo- 
ple of the earth in His millennial kingdom. This is 
like the vision of Him which Daniel had, and which 
John describes in the first chapter of Revelation. 
The "jasper" is the precious stone which is the 
wall of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the sardine, 
the same as sardius, or a blood red ruby, is the 
center stone in the heavenly city; hence we see that 
Jesus unites in Himself every glory from the cen- 
ter to the circumference of the City of God, and 
every possible gift, and grace, and majesty, and 
charm which it is possible for the Godhead to 
bestow upon the humanity of the Incarnate 
Word. 

As Jesus, after the resurrection, appeared and 
disappeared at will to His servants, appointing 
them a place to meet, and suddenly appearing in 
their midst and .holding sweet communion with 
them, and then vanishing out of their sight, so it 
will be when He reigns on this earth. 

3. "There was a rainbow round about the throne, 
in sight like unto an emerald." This rainbow, the 
predominant color of which was green, opens up a 
vast range of glorious things which will exist in 
the millennial kingdom. This is a companion 
picture in all respects with that which is set forth 
in the 9th chapter of Genesis, when God stretched 
the rainbow over Noah's altar, just after the flood. 
Jesus Himself tells us, in the 24th chapter of 



136 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



Matthew, of the wonderful analogy between Noah's 
flood and His second coming, and that analogy is 
more accurate and marvelous than we might at 
first sight apprehend. The ascent of Noah and his 
family up into the ark corresponds with the ascent 
of those in the first resurrection and the translated 
saints into the air to meet Jesus. The descent of 
the rain punishing the inhabitants living in sin cor- 
responds with the great tribulations. The return 
of the ark with its inhabitants back to Mount Ara- 
rat corresponds with the return of Jesus and His 
glorified saints back to Mount Zion, at which time, 
Zechariah tells us, Jesus will put his foot on Mount 
Olivet. The going forth of Noah and his sons to 
take charge of the new world beautifully repre- 
sents the going forth of Jesus and His hundred and 
forty- four thousand to take charge of the world in 
the millennial age. The altar erected by Noah, on 
which to offer sacrifices, corresponds with the theo- 
cratic throne erected for Jesus at the opening of 
the new age. The rainbow over Noah's altar, as a 
sign of God's covenant, corresponds with the 
rainbow around the millennial throne of Jesus, as 
the pledge of the millennial covenant, and the ful- 
filling of all the prophecies, and the bringing in of 
everlasting righteousness, and the filling of the 
earth with the glory of the Lord as the waters 
cover the sea. Everything in the Old Testament 
has a companion piece in the New Testament, and 
the 9th of Genesis and the 4th of Revelation are 
companion chapters, the one being the fulfillment 
of the other. Isaiah prophesied of this millennial 



THE RAINBOW AROUND THE THRONE. 137 

kingdom, with its rainbow at the opening of the 
new age or divine glory on earth. 

If we carefully read Isaiah 54th we will see a de- 
scription of the Lord as a Husband being married 
to believers that should be selected from among the 
Gentiles, and that the Lord, under the character 
of a Husband and a Redeemer, shall be called in 
that day the God of the whole earth, and that He 
will establish His everlasting kindness, and that 
the curse which He put on the earth should be re- 
moved just as the waters of Noah's flood w T ere re- 
moved, and that the covenant which He made with 
Noah concerning the earth not being drowned any 
more should be repeated and refulfilled in the cov- 
enant of peace wiiich He will make at that time. 
He also prophesies the building up of His millen- 
nial throne and kingdom in Jerusalem by laying the 
foundations with sapphires, and making the win- 
dows of agates and the gates of rubies, and that 
righteousness shall be established, and ail terror 
and fear removed, and concludes the gorgeous 
prophecy by saying, "This is the heritage of the 
servants of the Lord." Thus Isaiah prophesies 
the intimate connection between the facts and phe- 
nomena of Noah opening the new age and Jesus 
opening the millennial age. 

4. There is great significance in the fact that the 
predominant color in the rainbow was that of 
emerald or green. This color represents hope, 
verdure, or spring of the year, prosperity. When 
the High Priest in the Jewish economy put on his 
breastplate, there were twelve precious stones in 



138 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



the breastplate, a stone for each of the twelve 
tribes, and it is significant that the stone for Judah 
was that of the emerald. God foresaw that Judah 
was to be the ruling tribe, from which should 
spring King David and his greater Son, King 
Jesus. Hence God selected the emerald as the 
precious gem of the ruling tribe. It is in keeping 
with this thought that all through the Jewish age, 
Jesus was denominated the "Hope of Israel," and 
it is in keeping with the same truth that the com- 
ing of Jesus and His reign on the earth is set forth 
all through the New Testament, as "the Hope'' of 
the Gentile believers. So the green rainbow and 
the emerald stone belong to Jesus in the special re- 
lationship of the King of the Jews, and the King 
of Saints, and the glorious rulership of this world 
in the millennial age. This color of green repre- 
sents also the lifting of the curse from man and 
animals and the earth at the opening of the new age. 
If you will read the ninth chapter of Genesis and 
notice carefully you will see that the covenant 
which God made with Noah was a covenant first 
with Noah, and then with his children, and then 
with the cattle, and then with the fowls of the air, 
and then the creeping things, and then with the 
very earth itself, so that nothing was left out from 
the range of that covenant. 

The same truth applies to the covenant which 
will be carried out in the theocratic government of 
Jesus on earth. The curse will be lifted from men, 
and women, and children, and from the four-footed 
beasts, and the fowls of the air, and the trees of 



THE RAINBOW AROUND THE THRONE. 139 

the field, and the earth itself. The curse God put 
on man was that of hard work, and sweat; diffi- 
culty of making a living, and this will be lifted 
away. The curse God put on woman was that of 
suffering in her office as a mother in the bearing 
and caring for of children, and this curse will be 
removed at the opening of the millennial age from 
the people who are living at that time. Of course, 
we must remember that these truths apply, not to 
the glorified saints who have returned with Christ 
from the wedding, but to those human beings who 
have lived on the earth through the great tribula- 
tions, and who will be the progenitors of the mil- 
lennial generations. The curse on the four-footed 
beasts was that of devouring each other, and this 
curse will be removed, for we are told emphatically 
that the lion will eat straw and grass, and be per- 
fectly harmless in that age. The curse on the 
ground was that it should not bring forth its nor- 
mal crops, and this curse will be removed under 
the reign of Jesus. "And all the trees will yield 
their fruit, and the earth will yield her increase/' 
and one acre of ground will doubtless yield more 
than twenty acres now. The curse will be taken 
away from the atmosphere, and there will be no 
abnormal seasons, no storms, no cyclones, no earth- 
quakes, but every movement of the four seasons, 
and of the winds, and the temperature, and of the 
harvests of the earth, will be as accurate, and beau- 
tiful, and harmonious, as the roll of the shining 
stars along their unvarying orbits. Everything 
will take on the character of verdure, and health- 



140 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



fulness, and vigor, and prosperity. All outward 
sin will be prohibited. Satan will be bound, and 
though the nations, by their natural generation, 
will have the principal of inward sin, the same as 
now, yet there will be no demons to tempt, and no 
outward forms of wickedness alknved, hence the 
people will be born under conditions of perfect 
love. Their intellects will be clear, and vigorous, 
and not possessed as they now are by demons. 
Everything will conduce to deep spirituality, and 
breadth, and clearness of intellectual wisdom, and 
the rapidly multiplying populations of that age 
will be under the continual guardianship, instruc- 
tion, and dominion of the glorified saints, who will 
be, as Scripture teaches us. the elder brethren, 
that is "the church of the first bom," to the na- 
tions who will live on the earth. 

Thus the theocratic throne, with the emerald 
rainbow around it, sets forth the coming govern- 
ment, that it shall be one of glory and prosperity, 
extending from the centre of the throne out into all 
the ramified details of nature, and grace, and all 
men and animals, and the laws of the material 
world. 



THE LIVING CREATURES IN THE THRONE. 141 



CHAPTER XVII. 

"THE LIVING CREATURES IN THE THRONE." 
Rev. 4:6. 

AFTER telling us of the vision of the theocratic 
throne, with the Lord Jesus sitting on the 
throne, in the radiance of His glorified humanity, 
and the rainbow of emerald around the throne, the 
type of everlasting verdure and prosperity, both 
in the spiritual, and intellectual, and material 
world, the apostle proceeds to describe the "four 
living creatures" that sit with Christ in the midst 
of the throne, that is, the glorified members of His 
mystical body, who are to share with Him places 
of honor and authority in His everlasting govern- 
ment. The four and twenty elders referred to are 
doubtless the twelve patriarchs and the twelve 
apostles. 

The four living creatures spoken of in this chap- 
ter are exactly the same as the living creatures de- 
scribed in Ezekiel's vision, and if we look carefully 
into the first and tenth chapters of Ezekiel, we 
find his vision a description of the opening of the 
millennial age, and the restoration of the Jews to 
their own land, under the restored throne of David, 
and the living creatures that moved like flashes of 
lightning, and had the appearance of burning coals 
of fire, that superintended the movement of the 
wheels, is a description of the ministry of the glori- 
fied saints in 1he millennial age. 



142 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



Concerning these creatures, and their rank in the 
coming kingdom of Jesus, we may note the follow- 
ing items: 

1. The four living creatures described by St. 
John and Ezekiel are identical with the beings 
elsewhere spoken of as the cherubim and sera- 
phim. It is a great mistake to suppose that these 
beings are the same as those commonly called in 
Scripture the angels. All the names given to these 
cherubic living creatures are different from the 
names ascribed to the angels, and they are never 
used as synonyms with each other. Nor are the 
offices filled by these living creatures the same as 
the offices filled by the angels. Hence neither in 
their names, nor in their offices, nor in their minis- 
try are they ever confounded with the angels. If 
the cherubim and seraphim, that is, these living 
creatures, had been representatives of angels, then 
their formation on the mercy seat would have been 
contrary to the commandment, which says, "Thou 
shalt not make any image of any creature in 
heaven above or earth beneath.'' But inasmuch 
as glorified humanity was not a fact at the time 
the law was given, the representation of them was 
only a prophecy of an order of creatures to come in 
the future age, and so the command was not vio- 
lated. 

2. Unless the cherubim represent redeemed and 
glorified humanity, then there was nothing in the 
whole system of Jewish typology to set it forth. 
In the structure of the Hebrew tabernacle end tem- 
ple there was a careful representation of the whole 



THE LIVING CREATURES IN THE THRONE. 143 

process of redemption, of the incarnation of Jesus, 
of the atonement for sin, both actual and origi- 
nal, of repentance, of regeneration, of sanctifica- 
tion, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, all set forth in 
various forms and degrees. Now would it not be 
strange to set forth the whole purpose of redemp- 
tion without having anything to represent the re- 
sult of redemption, to emblematize the outcome of 
salvation in glorified humanity? Hence the erec- 
tion of the cherubim on the mercy seat was a type 
of the living creatures that should be the outcome 
of redeeming grace and the glorified ministry of the 
coming age. 

3. We learn from the writings of Moses that the 
form of the cherubim or the living creatures was 
made out of the identical same piece of gold that 
formed the lid of the mercy seat on the ark. They 
were not made of a separate piece of gold, or in 
any wise detached from the lid, but the same piece 
that formed the lid was turned up at the ends to 
form the image of the living creatures. This shows 
that the same piece of gold on which the blood was 
sprinkled was the identical one that formed the 
cherubim, illustrating that the same beings who 
were sprinkled by the precious blood of the atone- 
ment were to be the living creatures in whom 
should dwell the radiant fire of the shekinah, the 
living, burning presence of God Himself within 
them. 

The word "cherub" means one who is "held 
fast,'' one seized upon as with a tight grasp, hence 
the cherubim was held fast to the lid of the mercy 



144 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



seat, and represents that thorough .and perfect 
union between the Lord Jesus and those who are 
fully saved and established in holiness and held in 
His right hand, and who share the highest possible 
union with Christ in His life, and sufferings, and 
victory, and who are to have dominion. 

The word ''seraphim" means the '"burning ones, " 
those who are filled with the Holy Ghost and fire, 
typefled by the shekinah flame that shone out be- 
tween the wings of the cherubim over the ark. 
(Ps. 80. 1st). 

4. These living creatures are set forth as being 
ministers of grace, which is nowhere the case with 
angels. One of these seraphims conveyed the live 
coal of fire to the lips of Isaiah, a type of the fire 
baptized ministry, conveying the living word of 
God to seeking souls, and rendering service in their 
purification. Also in the vision of Ezekiel these 
living creatures always go the way the Holy Spirit 
leads, and out of them went forth flashes of light- 
ning, setting forth that they were the channels for 
the outflow of the Holy Spirit. 

5. These living creatures are represented in 
the 5th chapter of Revelation as having the harps 
of God and golden vials full of odors, which are 
expressly said to be the prayers of the sanctified 
ones, and they sing the new song, praising the Lord 
Jesus who was slain and had redeemed them to 
God by His blood out of every kindred, and tongue, 
and people, and nation, and had made them unto 
God kings and priests, and they rejoiced that they 
should reign with Jesus on the earth. This proves 



THE LIVING CREATURES IN THE THRONE. 145 



absolutely and concisely everything I have said 
in the preceding items that they were redeemed 
and glorified men, and had been lifted to a place in 
the theocratic government of • Jesus over the 
nations. 

6. They arc called the four living creatures be- 
cause "four" is that number which sets forth re- 
deemed humanity, especially those who have very 
high rank among the redeemed and glorified ones. 
They had the face of a lion, typefying royalty, and 
the face of an ox, typefying humble service, the 
face of a man, signifying intelligence or enlight- 
ened reason, and the face of a soaring eagle, type- 
fying supernatural and divine victory over all ter- 
restrial things. 

We have already seen the startling accuracy of 
analogy, between Noah and the flood, and the ark 
as representing the coming of Jesus, and the con- 
current events. Now it w r as a singular providence, 
that God arranged that there should be just four 
men in the ark, and each man with his wife. These 
four men, coming forth from the ark at the open- 
ing of the new age, after the flood, was a perfect 
type of the four living creatures that John speaks 
of, as being in the throne with the Lord Jesus, at 
the opening of the millennial age. This is not all. 
During the days of Daniel in Babylon, Nebuchad- 
nezzar fancied himself to be the fulfillment of that 
prophecy which told of one great God-man that 
should govern the whole world, and the great 
golden image which he set up was the picture of 
himself, as that great promised one who should 

1 o 



146 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



rule the world. Now, singularly enough, God ar- 
ranged to rebuke his impious blasphemy by setting 
forth a demonstration of the true Kingdom of God. 
The three Hebrew children were cast into the fur- 
nace of fire, and the great king looking in was 
astonished to find four men loose, walking in the 
flames, and one like unto the Son of God. There 
we have a perfect vision of Jesus as the God-man, 
with three of His chosen ones, making up the typ- 
ical number of four, that should represent the 
coming Kingdom of God on earth. And we notice 
that Nebuchadnezzar issued at once a great procla- 
mation concerning these four living ones that he 
saw in the furnace, ''that God had shown signs and 
wonders concerning His Kingdom, which was an 
everlasting kingdom, and His dominion from gen- 
eration to generation.' 5 Thus God rebuked the 
great monarch and revealed to him that the time 
was coming when God's Kingdom should fill this 
earth, and that it should be under the jurisdiction 
of glorified men that should be victorious, not only 
over all kings and despots, but over all the laws of 
nature and the power of fire. 

Again we are told both by our Savior and by St. 
Peter that the transfiguration of Jesus was de- 
signed expressly to set forth "His coming and His 
kingdom." Now with the same accuracy of divine 
providence, Jesus took only three of the apostles 
with Him up into the mountain, and those the ones 
who lived in closest relationship with Himself, 
typefying the elected ones, or those who should be 
the most perfectly prepared. Jesus and Peter and 



THE LIVING CREATURES IN THE THRONE. 147 

James and John in that transfiguration glory cor- 
respond exactly with Noah and his three sons in 
the ark, and with the Son of God and the three 
Hebrews in the fiery furnace, and with the four 
living creatures in the millennial throne. 

We must remember that the Scriptures repre- 
sent Jesus as one with His saints, a brotherhood of 
kings. They are heirs and joint heirs to the same 
kingdom, and one of the amazing surprises that 
await the real humble followers of Jesus will be 
the extent to which they will share His joy, and 
glory, and honor, and dominion in His coming 
kingdom. 

7. If we want to get a correct view of the mode 
of existence which will characterize the glorified 
saints during the millennial reign, we have it set 
forth in the manner of life which Jesus spent in 
the forty days after He arose from the dead. From 
the instant that Jesus arose from the dead, His 
body was glorified and absolutely free from all ma- 
terial laws, and under the supreme sway of the 
laws of the glorified world, if we can say that that 
state of being has any laws apart from the un- 
limited choice of the will. He told Mary when she 
approached Him near the sepulchre after He had 
arisen that He had not ascended to the Father. 
But that very day He did ascend to the Father 
and report the completed work of redemption, and 
that night showed Himself to His disciples, and in- 
vited them to handle Him and see that He was in- 
deed the veritable Jesus of Nazareth. He appeared 
and disappeared at will, taking His body through 



148 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



stone walls, with barred doors, eating and drink- 
ing with His disciples, and communing with them 
familiarly and lovingly, and then vanishing out of 
their sight. Here we have the manner in which the 
glorified saints will live and reign with Christ dur- 
ing the millennial age. They are to be the priests, 
and ministers, and teachers, and superintend all 
the details of life among the nations in that age, 
and, like the risen Jesus, will appear to the people 
on the earth to instruct, or aid, or correct, or com- 
mune with them at will, and at will vanish again 
into the air. The whole atmosphere surrounding 
the earth will be thronged day and night with these 
glorified ones, swiftly and safely moving hither 
and thither on the earth or in the air, singing as 
they go, with the harps of God in their hands, and 
crowns of gold upon their brow, and songs of 
ecstatic gladness on their lips, each one filling His 
own appointed mission in absolute harmony w 7 ith 
each other and with their King. 

It is very evident that all the millions of the other 
saved ones who did not rise in the first resurrection 
w T ill be present with Jesus, and remain in their 
present state as disembodied and happy spirits 
awaiting then, as they do now, the general resur- 
rection. 

The apostle John tells us very definitely about 
the living creatures, and about the number that 
constitute the bride of the lamb being with Jesus 
in His throne, that is, rulers in His government, 
but he tells us of all the others of the saved ones 
from the earth, comprising a multitude that no 



THE LIVING CREATURES IN THE THRONE. 149 

man could number, that they stood before the 
throne, that is, they were members of the Kingdom 
of Heaven, and shared in its glory, but had not 
yet been raised to places of rulership in the king- 
dom. This is no fancy description of my own, but 
one that is expressly stated in several places and in 
different ways in the Word of God, and I must sim- 
ply take the Word of God as it is. When the 
Scriptures speak of those persons who make up the 
bride of the Lamb, or who sit at the wedding sup- 
per, or who are rulers with Jesus, it always speaks 
of them as a definite number, but when the Scrip- 
tures speak of all the saved ones from the human 
race, including the saved among the heathen, who 
obeyed their light and the saved number of count- 
less millions who have died in infancy, and the 
saved multitudes who are cleansed in the hour of 
death, it speaks of them as being like the sands of 
the seashore, and like the innumerable stars of 
heaven, and as being a multitude that no man could 
number. Hence the old notion that all the re- 
deemed ones from the earth have the same rank 
in the future ages is utterly unscriptural as well as 
unreasonable. No one will reign with Jesus in His 
coming kingdom, except those who have paid for 
that privilege in this life by the humility and 
crucifixion of self and the testings of faith, which 
have qualified them for that position. This is ex- 
actly the teaching of Jesus when the mother of 
James and John requested that her two sons should 
sit the one on the right and the other on the left 
when He came to reign on this earth, and Jesus 



150 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



told her expressly that such positions in His com- 
ing kingdom had to be purchased by drinking His 
cup and sharing His baptism, and that no one 
could be lifted to such a principality in His em- 
pire, except those for whom it was prepared and 
those who were prepared for the position. 

8. We are told in several places that these living 
creatures in the throne "are to rule the nations 
with a rod of iron," and that they "shall break all 
nations to pieces, as the vessels of the potter are 
broken to shivers," and "that they shall tread 
down the wicked as ashes under their feet," and 
that "they shall have dominion over the wicked." 

Let us remember that at the opening of the mil- 
lennial age, when Jesus and His saints return from 
the wedding, they will find the nations of the 
earth in a sad plight. Doubtless many will repent 
in the tribulations, but still sin will be rampant, 
and there will be a sharp, decisive conflict with 
ungodly men at the opening of the new age, to 
bring them into perfect subjection to the theocratic 
throne. This is strikingly declared and set forth 
in this 4th chapter by the words, that "out of the 
throne proceeded lightnings, and thunderings, and 
voices. " These lightnings and thunderings are the 
im])erial edicts that will go forth among all nations 
at the very opening of the millennial government, 
Many persons suppose that the wicked nations on 
this earth are to be conquered by mild and gradual 
processes of religion, but every place in Scripture 
which describes the conquering of the nations sets 
it forth as a short, sharp, decisive conflict, not ac- 



THE LIVING CREATURES IN THE THRONE. 151 

complished by gospel principles, but by the impe- 
rial- Son of God taking charge of the world and its 
people. 

As soon as the throne of David is again set up in 
Jerusalem the myriads of glorified living creatures, 
members of the bridehood of Christ, will go forth 
with princely power into every nook and corner of 
the inhabitable globe. They will search every 
house, and home, and building on earth, and com- 
pel the inhabitants to burn up all whisky, and in- 
toxicants, and tobacco, and poisons, and bad pic- 
tures, and erroneous books, and all the implements 
of war, or cruelty, and all articles of art or furni- 
ture, which are the works of the devil, or the in- 
struments of sin, and the whole world will be 
cleaned out in every department of industry, com- 
merce, or education, or social life, and the rod of 
iron, or inflexible law of righteousness, will be put 
down on every human being, and all the details of 
life. This is the real meaning of that large class 
of Scriptures which describe the dominion of 
saints, and ruling the nations with a rod of iron. 

Remember that these glorified beings will have 
power equal to the angels, for Jesus says, those 
who shall be counted, as the Greek has it, extra 
worthy of a place in the first resurrection, shall be 
equal to the angels. The look from an angel's face 
paralyzed the hundred soldiers guarding the tomb 
of Jesus. The brush of an angel's wing swept the 
breath out of 185,000 Assyrian soldiers slumbering 
in their camp around Jerusalem in the days of 
Hezekiah. Hence it will be impossible for the 



152 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



wicked to resist the glorified, saints when they 
come forth to revolutionize the world and recon- 
struct the whole human race on the basis of a 
divine government among men. 

A very good illustration can be found in that of 
the conquest of England by William the Con- 
queror. Previous to his conquest, England was 
filled with petty kings and kingdoms, but the great 
William wiped out these petty kingdoms, and con- 
solidated all England under one government, and 
he appointed his officers and soldiers, who had 
fought with him, to places in his kingdom, making 
them dukes, and earls, and lords, and knights, and 
assigning to them different counties and earldoms. 
And at the beginning of his consolidated govern- 
ment, he sent forth some thundering edicts among 
the people, and among them was an edict that the 
people of England should destroy every old wooden 
house, and build them houses of stone. This may 
serve to illustrate how Jesus the conqueror will wipe 
out all the national governments on this earth, and 
consolidate the entire human race under one gov- 
ernment, with one language, and compel the people 
of the world to destroy their arts, and trades, and 
customs, and to adopt those new ones, which will 
be perfectly righteous, and humane, and equitable. 
It is then that men will learn the art of war no 
more. The last vestige of it will pass away. There 
will be no more locks and keys, no more jails, or 
courthouses, or human legislatures, no more law- 
yers, or doctors, no more railroad magnates, or 
wheat gamblers, or scheming money lenders, or 



THE LIVING CREATURES IN THE THRONE. 153 



heretical teachings, or implements of vice, or games 
of chance, or theatres. Righteousness will fill the 
earth as the waters fill the sea. Everybody will be 
under the guardianship of the myriads of the glori- 
fied living creatures, and every department of life 
superintended by them, with inspired and infallible 
equity, and beauty, and gentle, tender love. The 
glorified ones will be the church of the first born, 
and they will take care of all the billions who will 
be born in that age, as a loving, thoughtful elder 
sister cares for the younger ones of the family. 

9. After these revolutionary and reconstruction 
movements, typified by the lightnings and thun- 
derings from the throne, John says he saw before 
the throne a sea of glass, clear as crystal. After 
the storm and shock of reconstruction has been 
gone through with, in which the nations of the 
world will make a rapid transition from anarchy to 
the heavenly theocracy, then the nations will be 
rapidly evangelized, and under the ministry of the 
glorified ones millions on mi] lions will be speedily 
led to repentance, and saving faith, and sanctifying 
power. All demons will have been chained in the 
pit. People's consciences and minds will be open 
to truth. Their great sufferings will have con- 
quered their pride. The blessed Holy Ghost will 
flood the world with His presence. The message 
of grace will be everywhere accompanied with di- 
vine power, and nations will be born to God in a 
day. 

The words "sea" and tk waters ,? in this book repre- 
sent the souls of men. Clear, glassy water repre- 



15-4 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



sents pure, sanctified souls. Hence, shortly after 
the throne of Jesus is set up, in front of the throne, 
the nations of the earth will be spread out, like a 
beautiful silver sea of transparent glass, their 
souls purified and filled with quietness, and love, 
and obedience, and all the moral, intellectual, and 
social conditions of mankind, will move onward 
through the bright, beautiful centuries, like a 
clear, glassy stream flowing smoothly over golden 
sands. 

This same picture is given by John again in the 
15th chapter, where he describes the glorified 
saints who had come off more than conquerors as 
standing on the glassy sea, that is, they presided 
over the tranquil, purified nations of the earth, and 
had the harps of God, and sung the song of Moses 
and the song of the Lamb. 

There are times when we get very close to God, 
and His pure love burns so sweetly in our hearts that 
these visions given us by St. John are spread out 
so clearly before our eye of faith that we perceive 
them with a vividness and reality that make our 
heart flutter with the anticipation of the glory, and 
brightness, and sweetness, and music, and worship, 
and heavenly intelligence that will fill the world in 
those golden days. Who does not long to see these 
things come to pass? This is the vision that 
thrilled St. Paul when his head was on the chop- 
ping block, and he saw that crown of righteous- 
ness that he would wear in Christ's coming king- 
dom, and saw other crowns for all those who love 
the appearing and coming reign of the Lord Jesus. 



CONCLUSION. 



155 



When King Solomon built the temple he put in 
front of the altar a brazen sea supported by twelve 
brazen oxen. This was an inspired type. Solo- 
mon's reign w T as a type of the millennial kingdom, 
and the brazen sea a type of the sea of glass, or 
sanctified society, and being supported by twelve 
oxen, typefied that the millennial kingdom would 
be supported by the members of Christ's bride- 
hood, that is, the twelve times twelve of the hun- 
dred and forty-four thousand. Well may we say, 
"blessed and holy are they that shall have a part 
in the first resurrection, and that shall be counted 
worthy of a place to reign with Jesus in His throne 
and in His kingdom." 



CONCLUSION. 



I have not had space in this book to give a de- 
tailed account of the many prophecies which refer 
to the millennial age, or to set before the reader 
the marvelous glories that will fill the earth at that 
time in the extraordinary inventions, and the 
social, intellectual, and spiritual progress that will 
then be developed. 

We learn from several prophecies such as "The 
child shall die a hundred years old, and the age of 
my people shall be as the age of a tree," that 
human life among those who are born in that age 
will be lengthened to antediluvian lifetime. We 



156 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



must remember, however, that the human i ace will 
still be in a fallen condition, and those who are 
born in that age will have the principle of original 
sin in their nature, hence the Scriptures do not 
teach that everybody born in that age will be holy. 
Several places in the Book of Psalms, it is said in 
the margin, that many people in that time -'will 
serve the King feignedly. v Hence toward the 
close of that age there will be great multitudes 
who have secret sin in their hearts, and will be 
open to the delusion and devices of a tempting 
devil. So John tells us "that after the thousand 
years are ended Satan will again be loosed out of 
his prison for a short time, and go forth to deceive 
these multitudes'' w T ho harbor inward sin, and they 
will rebel against the dominion of the saints; then 
lightning from heaven will destroy every one of 
them. Then follows the general resurrection, of 
hoth great and small, all the dead who had not 
been raised in the first resurrection. Then the 
great white throne is set up in the regions of the 
air, and every human being will be assembled, and 
stand one by one before that throne to give an ac- 
count of himself. This great judgment day may 
last a thousand years, or a sufficient time for all 
the untold millions of earth to render an exact de- 
tail account of his life during probation. 

During that time the earth will be burned over, 
and crystalized into a glorious orb, and the water 
in the sea will be consumed by the fire, and the 
whole planet celestialized, and made a part of the 
heaven of glory, The lost will be banished into 



CONCLUSION. 



157 



the outer regions of darkness, and the saved of all 
the ages, both "the church of the first born," and 
the church of the second born, and the myriads 
that were saved in the millennial age, will return 
to the glorified earth as their home, with the privi- 
leges of angels and glorified beings of other 
worlds, of moving to and fro throughout all the 
whole universe according to the will of God. 

There are intimations in Scripture that all the 
created worlds will be in the future ages filled with 
intelligent populations, and that God will use the 
saved and glorified millions of this earth as mis- 
sionaries and ministers to the younger races of 
beings on the other worlds to warn them against 
falling into sin by rehearsing to them the awful 
history of sin in our own world. 

St. Paul says in the close of his wonderful prayer 
in Ephesians that God will glorify Himself in the 
church unto the generations of the ages of ages, 
and by some inexcusable blunder in our common 
version of the Bible the word "generations" in the 
Greek is entirely left out in our translation. And 
John tells us that after the new heavens and the 
new earth in the glorified state we shall serve the 
Lord oar God for ever and ever. 



158 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



SUPPLEMENT CHAPTER. 

CHRIST'S RETURN TO JERUSALEM. 

HEN we have a clear spiritual apprehension 



V V of the coming of Christ back to this earth 
to gather out His saints and glorify them, and then 
to assume personal dominion over the nations 
of the earth for a thousand years, it en- 
ables us to understand a great multitude of Scrip- 
ture passages which are otherwise enveloped in 
great mist, or else entirely unintelligible. There 
are many acts in the life of Jesus which seem with- 
out significance, unless interpreted as prophetic 
events to be accomplished in His return back to 
this earth. ( There are many things recorded in 
the gospels that never have had their proper 
weight with believers, and are seen only as bril- 
liant fragments in the life of Jesus, because they 
have not been looked upon in the light of Hispre- 
millennial coming, and as prophetic events of His 
reign on the earth. The banquet at Bethany is 
declared by Christ Himself as prophetic, and when 
Mary anointed Him with spikenard as being a 
prophecy of His death and burial, and the break- 
ing of the alabaster box, the breaking of His body, 
and pouring forth the ointment, the pouring forth 
of His life on the world. The transfiguration was 
given expressly as a p r °plietic sample of His 
second coming and outshining of His glory when 




CHRIST'S RETURN TO JERUSALEM. 159 

He gathers His elect ones from heaven and earth 
up into the air; and there is no proper understand- 
ing of that event except as a type of His second 
coming. In like manner the account of Jesus 
riding into Jerusalem as recorded in the 21st of 
Matthew can have no adequate interpretation ex- 
cept as a prophetic event of His return to this 
earth. Let us turn to the 21st of Matt, and study 
the event recorded from the first to the sixteenth 
verse in the light of Christ's return, and we will 
see that instead of its being a mere transient act in 
the earthly life of Christ, it stretches away across 
the centuries, and assumes the magnitude of a 
glorious and world-wide fulfillment in the coming 
kingdom of our Lord. 

First. We see in this account that our Lord was 
returning to Jerusalem for the last time from the 
east side of Jordan. He came up by Jericho, where 
He healed the blind man, and. as He approached the 
vicinity of Jerusalem He providentially allowed 
the people to make great demonstrations, and He 
Himself seemed about to assume the throne of 
David. This was a prophetic act of the time when 
He shall return from the wedding and come back 
to Jerusalem in the capacity of the King of kings 
and Lord of lords, to set up His throne over the 
nations of the earth. In His parables, Jesus rep- 
resents Himself as being now in a far country, and 
having a kingdom prepared for Him, and that all 
His true servants are being put to a test in regard 
to their heart loyalty and their individual steward- 
ship of His gifts and grace. 



160 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



But just as certainly as this nobleman has called 
His servants, and given them various gifts and re- 
sponsibilities, and is now gone into a far country, 
so certainly will He return to the very city, and 
country, and earth, from whence He went. 

Second. TVo see in this account of the triumphal 
entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, that He laid aside 
His usual conduct of being a servant, and began to 
assume the conduct of authority, and royalty, and 
to exercise that legitimate authority which belonged 
to Him as an inherent king over His subjects. He 
sent two of His disciples into the village, and com- 
manded them to take the young ass and colt, on 
which no man had ever rode, and to bring it to 
Him, and said, "If any man shall say ought to you 
about it, you shall say, 'The Lord hath need of 
him.' v This incident rises out from the usual tenor 
of the life of Jesus, as an abrupt mountain rises 
from a plain, and it is marked all over with the 
character of absolute ownership and authority over 
all men and animals. Jesus was the absolute pro- 
prietor of those disciples, and of that colt, and of 
the man who temporarily owned the colt, as He 
was the proprietor of every atom on the earth, and 
of all worlds, and of all creatures. But all through 
His life He acted as one utterly poor, and forewent 
all His rights as a God and a king, depending on 
others for His sustenance, and living as a bene- 
ficiary on the charity of His creatures. But in this 
event, the veil of absolute poverty is, for a moment, 
rent asunder, and He emerges from His life of 
poverty, and His words and actions betray Him to 



CHRIST'S RETURN TO JERUSALEM.. 161 

be absolute owner of all things. We never can 
understand this act in its vast magnitude until we 
make it the telescope through which we look over 
the centuries to the time when He shall again re- 
turn to Jerusalem, no longer in the guise of a serv- 
ant, and depending on His creatures, but as Lord 
and monarch over everybody and everything, 
whether angels, or men, or animals, or the inani- 
mate creation. And when looked at in this light, 
how this simple record in Matthew towers aloft, 
and expands into a vast and broad significance, 
which gives it a meaning equal to the glorious per- 
sonage of the Lord Jesus. 

Third. We are told in these verses, that Jesus en- 
tered Jerusalem in the capacity of a king. ' 'All 
this was done that it might be fulfilled which was 
spoken of the prophet, saying, 'Tell you the 
daughter of Sion, behold, thy king cometh unto 
thee.'" I want to ask, in all seriousness, that if 
this event was not arranged as a prophecy of 
Christ's return to Jerusalem, to govern the earth, 
then where might be its real meaning? Jesus had 
lived on the earth about 33 years, and up to this 
time He had never assumed any real kingly pre- 
rogatives, nor exercised any authority over His 
creatures except as a spiritual teacher, and yet it 
is expressly said He was born to be a king over 
men, and over this earth, and no mythical king 
over an empire of Swedenborgian mysticism, but a 
bona fide king over real men. And now He for a 
few brief hours only, gives forth a manifestation 
of Himself in a kingly capacity, and then the brief 
1 1 



162 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



pageant of one quickly-flying day passes out of 
sight; this great king sinks back into the old role 
of poverty and persecution, and the shadows of a 
disgraceful death. Let us turn to the prophecy re- 
ferred to by Matthew, in Isaiah 62:11: "Behold, 
the Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the world; 
say ye to the daughter of Zion, behold, thy salva- 
tion cometh." Also to Zech. 9:9, ^Rejoice greatly, 
oh, daughter of Zion; shout, oh, daughter of Jeru- 
salem; behold, thy king cometh unto thee, who is 
just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon 
an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass. And I 
will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the 
horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be 
cut off, and He shall speak peace unto the heathen, 
and His dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from 
the river to the ends of the earth/ 

Now in the light of this prophecy it is simply 
preposterous absurdity to say that all this magnifi- 
cent prophecy by Zechariah was fulfilled in that 
one transient demonstration of Jesus entering 
Jerusalem, which filled less than one day with an 
exhibition of His royalty. When we compare the 
huge dimensions of Zechariah's prophecy with this 
account of Christ's triumphal entry into Jesusalem 
we see plainly that that entry was a brief, dazzling, 
prophetic event of the time when the prophecy 
should be accomplished. The prophet tells us in 
connection with Christ's riding into Jerusalem that 
there will be a doing away of war chariots and of 
war horses, and the destruction of the battle bow, 
and that it will be a time when God shall speak 



CHRIST'S RETURN TO JERUSALEM. 163 

peace among all heathen, and the vestiges of war 
will pass away, and the time when the dominion of 
this king of Zion shall stretch from sea to sea, and 
from the river to the ends of the earth. This 
prophecy does not refer to the third heavens, and 
where the Father now has His throne, nor to some 
ethereal mystical heaven which floats in common 
church theology, but emphatically to this earth 
and to the heathen nations on this earth, and to 
the literal city of Jerusalem, and to Jesus being 
the literal king over the sea and over the earth. 
We know that that prophecy was not fulfilled in 
that momentary pageant when Christ rode into 
Jerusalem, and it never has yet been fulfilled, for 
the heathen do not have peace, and wars still exist. 
But when we look at that event as prophetic of 
Jesus returning to this earth, and to Jerusalem, 
riding in majesty on His own creatures as absolute 
proprietor and king over all men, and animals, and 
sea, and land, then it becomes perfectly intelligible, 
and has an import which makes it equal to all the 
character and conduct of Jesus. 

Fourth. When Christ went riding into the city 
there were two companies, one went with Him and 
the other came out from the city to meet Him. 
And so we read that one multitude went before 
Him, and another followed Him, and they cried, 
saying: "Hosannah to the Son of David.'' This 
was prophetic of the two companies that will 
greet the Lord Jesus, and hail Him as king of the 
world. One company will descend with Him from 
the wedding. Those saints who are counted 



164 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



worthy to be raised in the first resurrection, and 
those who shall be prepared to be caught away at 
His appearing; these will be glorified and be with 
Him at the banquet in the air, and these are the 
ones who will return from the wedding. And then 
as He descends in fulfillment of prophecy to put 
His foot again on Mt. Olivet, the people on the 
earth who will have passed through the great trib- 
ulations will have been sufficiently humbled to hail 
Him as their king, and especially will this be true 
of the twelve tribes of Israel, who at that time will 
recognize Him as their Messiah, and will gladly 
shout hosannahs to Him as the Son of David and 
as their Lord and King. Thus the multitude that 
has been glorified with Him and the multitude that 
has been subdued by the great tribulations will 
both unite in shouting His praises and rending the 
air with the melodies and thunder and of their ap- 
plause as He returns to Jerusalem to set up His 
theocratic kingdom over all the earth. 

Fifth. We see that both of these multitudes in 
their hosannahs said, expressly, 4 'Jesus is the 
Son of David." Jesus is not only God, but a man, 
and, in His humanity, the offspring of King David, 
who was the founder of the theocracy, and Jesus as 
Son of David is the direct lineal heir to the throne 
of David. Now it is significant that since the birth 
of Jesus the Jews have never been able to find the 
rightful undeparted heir to the throne of David, 
for the lines of pedigree from the birth of Jesus 
ran off into so many directions it has been impossi- 
ble for them to fix on the lineage of the true heir, 



CHRIST'S RETURN TO JERUSALEM. 165 

and the man Jesus, the son of Mary, stands forth 
in history as the last and only heir to the theo- 
cratic throne which was established by David, the 
man after God's own heart. For nearly two 
thousand years the Jewish throne has been in 
eclipse, but the day is fast approaching when Jesus 
as David shall descend to this earth and triumph- 
antly ride into Jerusalem and assume command 
over the twelve tribes of Israel and all the nations 
of the earth. This is eminently the prophecy in 
the third chapter of Hosea. "For the children of 
Israel shall abide many days without a king and 
without a prince and without a sacrifice, and after- 
wards shall the children of Israel return and seek 
the Lord their God, and David their king, and 
shall fear the Lord and His goodness in the latter 
days." Here Jesus is definitely spoken of as the 
Lord and as David, and as ruling on this earth over 
the twelve tribes in the later days, that is, in the 
last age, which is the millennial age. 

Sixth. When Christ went riding into the city, ac- 
companied by these shouting multitudes, we are 
told that all the city was moved at the spectacle, 
saying, "Who is this?" And the multitude said, 
"This is Jesus." This item will be most perfectly 
fulfilled when Jesus returns to set up His govern- 
ment. All the people on the earth who have sur- 
vived the great tribulations will be profoundly 
moved to the innermost depths of their being in 
that memorable day. Let us remember at that 
time the hundreds of millions on the earth will be 
in an unsaved condition, rent and torn by the 



166 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



storms of the great tribulation, but ignorant of 
God and of salvation, and the nations of the earth 
will just be emerging from a state of anarchy, so 
that when Christ and the glorified saints return to 
the earth it may well strike a supernatural awe 
into all other spirits. 

Let us notice the striking contrast between the 
multitudes who followed Jesus into the city and 
the people of the city who were so moved at the 
spectacle. Those w T ho followed Him -were filled 
w T ith enthusiastic praises, casting their garments 
in the way, they prostrated themselves along the 
road, their very souls bursting forth with enthusi- 
astic applause. That scene faintly indicates the 
unbounded adoration and worship that will be 
given to Jesus by those who accompany Him back 
to this earth; they will throng His descending 
pathway from the heavenly wedding, and throw 
themselves millions on millions in postures of 
adoration and love and praise before Him, casting 
their crowns at His feet, and rending the very 
skies with their sweet voiced hallelujahs. 

I may stop here to say that those persons who 
will be among that happy throng are those who 
already in this life have abandoned themselves ut- 
terly to Jesus, and often prostrated themselves in 
humble secret prayer, casting their words and 
thoughts and lives like green boughs under His 
blessed feet, and receive Him already as their ab- 
solute owner and king in all the affairs of life. 
But those people who were in the city, and who 
were excited and moved at the royal procession, 



CHRIST'S RETURN TO JERUSALEM. 167 

represent the unsaved nations on the earth when 
Jesus comes with His glorified army to take pos- 
session. 

Seventh. After reaching the temple Jesus dis- 
mounted from the colt, and went into the temple of 
God and cast out all them that bought and sold their 
merchandise, and overthrew the tables of money 
changers and the seats of them that sold doves. 
This act of supreme authority in the temple of 
God of purging the temple of the money changers 
is ifl perfect keeping with His whole conduct as a 
king on that occasion, and is prophetic of that 
complete purging of the holy temple, and of all 
the things of this earth, when He establishes His 
reign over the w T orld. We are told in the third 
chapter of Jeremiah "that at that time Jerusalem 
will be the throne of the Lord," and we are told in 
many prophecies that Jesus shall reign in Sion, 
and in Jerusalem, and on the throne of David, and 
at that time He will purge Jerusalem. Thus when 
we look at this act at the close of that eventful 
day of purging the temple, it is a prophetic event 
of the earth-cleansing which Jesus will exercise at 
the opening of His millennial reign, it has a magni- 
tude of meaning which this Scripture could never 
have, except as viewed in this light. It is also 
significant that immediately following this austere 
purging of the temple, which had been made a den 
of thieves, there flocked around Him the blind and 
the lame in multitudes, and He healed them all. 
What act in the life of Jesus could more beautifully 
set forth the character of the beginning of His 



168 



STEPS TO THE THRONE. 



millennial reign. At that time He will most thor- 
oughly upset all the ungodly practices on the 
earth, and destroy every form of unrighteous traf- 
fic among the nations; but this very austerity of 
royal power will draw to Him the suffering, and 
the afflicted, and the weary-hearted ones, who have 
gone through the awful storm of the tribulation; 
and, right in connection with the suppressing of all 
wickedness among the nations, Jesus will exercise 
infinite compassion in healing all the sick on the 
earth, and comfort the broken-hearted, and extend 
His saving grace to all nations, and so work through 
the agency of His glorified saints, and the omnipres- 
ent power of the Holy Ghost, that in a short time 
from the setting up of His throne in Jerusalem, the 
earth shall be filled with the glory of God, as the 
waters fill the sea. Thus we discover that this 
brilliant pageant of Christ entering Jerusalem, was 
not merely for that one day, but, like a momentary 
sign in the roll of history, it furnishes a brief sam- 
ple of what will occur again — not as a transient 
event of a day, but as an abiding and world-wide 
fulfillment and of a magnitude that shall comport 
with Him as Lord of lords and King of kings! 



ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY THOUSAND ISSUED. 



Tears and Triumphs! 

This is the title of a song hook by Revs. L. L. Pickett, M. \V. Knapp and 
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SEE SOME FEW OF MANY TESTIMONIALS, 

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State whether you want Round Notes or Shapes. 

PICKETT PUBLISHING CO., 

LOUISVILLE, KY. 



BOOKS FOR BIBLE STUDENTS 

By EVANGELIST L. L. PICKETT. 

Highly Commended* Thousands Sold* 

THE BOOK AND ITS THEME. —Introduction by Bishop 
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LEAVES FROM THE TREE OF LIFE.— Full of Bible Truth 
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A Plea for the Holiness Movement 25 

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The Holy Day 10 

Why I do Not Immerse 10 

St. Paul on Holiness 5 

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BOOKS by REV, B. CARRADINE, 

THE FLAMING EVANGELIST* 



These Books contain Gospel Marrow, and 
are Highly Commended. 



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40,000 ISSUED FIRST EIGHT MONTHS. 



The Best Yet Made! 

THE OPINION SEEMS TO BE ABOUT UNANIMOUS THAT 

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ORDER OF 

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